Andy Partridge was in the bath when he listened to The Overview from start to finish for the first time.“My laptop was on the toilet, lid down, obviously,” he says. “I lay there, toying with my loofah, so to speak, and I thought, ‘Jesus, this is gigantic-sounding.’”
The former XTC man deserves a little of the credit. He was enlisted by Steven Wilson – a devotee of Partridge’s old band – to write lyrics for Objects: Meanwhile, one of the sequences in the first of the album’s two tracks, which contrasts fleeting human dramas taking place on the streets of an English town – from splitting grocery bags to the aftermath of a break-up or bereavement – with things much, much bigger.
“I thought, ‘Jesus, this is gigantic-sounding.’” “He said,…