It Took Seconds

Five minutes and fifty-three seconds: Andy Partridge’s voice remains an acquired taste, but I remember when I first heard XTC’s “River Of Orchids” being struck by how adeptly the track built. The song is an ecotopian fantasy - a perhaps post-human London returned to floral wilderness - and the arrangement at first has to push up through the silence like the lyric’s green shoots breaking the concrete. Then the song broadens and deepens and becomes something unstoppable, Partridge coming on through it like a middle-class English shaman. It’s as precious and eccentric as they’ve ever been but it’s XTC’s best late song and a fine climax to the series of nature-loving lyrics threaded through Partridge’s career.

What would your 5’53” track be?