Caroline
2002
XTC
Coat Of Many Cupboards
About This Album
XTC fans are a dedicated lot. There may not be many of them, but nearly all of them need to hear everything the group ever recorded. They'll happily spend hundreds of dollars on rare singles and bootlegs, or buy official releases of demos, even when they sound nearly identical to the official release, so a four-disc box set of rarities, demos, alternate takes, and live versions like Coat of Many Cupboards is essentially manna from heaven. If there's any problem with the set, it's that Virgin and XTC didn't go far enough and dedicate the set entirely to unreleased material; they hedged their bets, devoting 41 of 60 tracks to previously unreleased cuts, with the lion's share of the rest -- a full 14, actually -- being album tracks any XTC fan already has. No matter how good these songs are -- and they include such masterpieces as "Chalkhills and Children" and the Dukes of Stratosphear's "Vanishing Girl" -- their presence on a lovingly assembled rarities set is a fairly major irritant (even if the band is reportedly working on an even larger archival release, provisionally titled Fuzzy Warbles, that may span as many as eight volumes). Still, if this set had just one disc of rarities, XTC fans would have purchased it anyway, and they'll overjoy in the sheer volume of unheard music here.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 2,3,5,7 and 12)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 4,5,11,12 and 13)

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Disc 3 (try tracks 3,5,8,11 and 12)

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Disc 4 (try tracks 4,7,8,10 and 15)

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