A nasty contract war with an ex-label put XTC on ice for seven years, ultimately costing Apple Venus one of her limbs when Dave Gregory left before the album's completion. The long-awaited album, however, emerges as a ray of light after all that foul weather. Focusing on acoustic instruments and symphonic arrangements, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding have created an album of rerned ambition, employing detailed and decorous arrangements while taking care not glop too much make-up on the songs' pretty faces.

The playful, galloping "I'd Like That" ranks with Partridge's most hummable ditties, while the adventurous "River Of Orchids" shows a new wrinkle in his genius, crisscrossing three nursery rhyme melodies atop a pulsing score. Moulding's music-hall musings on small-town suburbia ("Fruit Nut" and "Frivolous Tonight") owe as much to Rodgers/Hammerstein as they do to Lennon/McCartney. While XTC's snap-crackle electric guitar work has made way for more "grown-up" instrumentation on Apple Venus, Partridge's toothy wit has not been rled down; the scathing "Your Dictionary" will make you very glad indeed that you are not the former Mrs. Partridge.