End Day (2005)

In 1997, BGO released Tom Rush/Wrong End of the Rainbow, which contained two complete albums – Tom Rush (1970, originally released on Columbia) and Wrong End of the Rainbow (1970, also originally released on Columbia) – by influential folky Tom Rush on one compact disc.

XTC almost never wrote a sentimental song– which is strange, when you consider how much of their music deals with nostalgia, home and country, and yearning. Their lyrics are bittersweet and escapist, but even in the lost summers of Skylarking, they cling to some element– biting words, knuckle-cracking hooks, or just a distractingly loud arrangement– that keeps their most heartstring-pulling, young-love-eulogizing songs from drifting away. Which is why their 1999 release Apple Venus Vol. 1 is so much more complicated and concrete than a first impression suggests. That album, plus its 2000 counterpart Wasp Star (Apple Venus Vol. 2), came out after a break of seven years. In that time, Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding, and Dave Gregory– who formally left the band before these albums were released– walked out on Virgin, stayed home making demos, and came back with this pair of records on TVT. And five years and no further material later, XTC have packaged them together in the Apple Box, along with lyrics, liner notes, and two demos-and-outtakes albums.

At the end of the Great War, nearly two million soldiers were missing, presumed dead. Almost 90 years later, the bloody battlegrounds of France and Belgium are surrendering their secrets. Beneath the farmlands lie the unknown and the unclaimed dead…