A certain age-old question has once again raised its nappy-ass head, troubling the small segment of society that spends way too many hours writing about pop music. The question: what makes one person love a song that another person hates? How can my co-workers prefer Lit to Mingus? Is there an actual reason, defensible on a theoretical level, for how I can love Shudder to Think and hate Queen? The idea of certain music having "meaning" has been put forth as an explanation, and likely, this is the explanation to which most of us gravitate. We generally prefer the idea of personal significance to the concept of a continuum scale of consensual meaning.

But the discussion of meaning in pop music is probably best tabled, and quick. The question, "What does this song mean to me?" is a semiotician's nightmare (or freaky sex dream-- what's the difference?), and few rock critics are up to that particular ontological and epistemological tangle. Certainly, I'm not. Forty years after a couple of French eggheads administered a fairly sound lashing to the idea that language is capable of any real attempt at communication, we're probably better off not suggesting that the Magnetic Fields are better than N'Sync based on some tenuous idea of signification.

Frankly, it's practically an unanswerable question. The sooner we abandon our personal quests to convince so-and-so that, say, Fleetwood Mac sucks, the better. Still, for what it's worth, I'm attracted to a linguistic approach. I like the idea that language acts on the brain and imposes an order on the actual physical organ. I like the idea that a sentence, or a guitar solo, is constructed based on certain neurological realities. I like the idea of my brain having a "taste center" in addition to a "language center" and a "motor center." Because with that formulation, the issue of self-worth immediately drops out and I get to stop feeling shitty for liking music that others hate.

Which brings me, in a way, to Wasp Star. This album went straight to my taste center, inhibiting serotonin reuptake and giving me a sense of pleasure and well-being. Moreover, it got me thinking about pop music and the brains that both make it and consume it.

Andy Partridge has got some brain. Whatever deep structure informs his pop syntax, the songs that result have just gotten better over time-- and there are a grip of good songs on Wasp Star. The lead-off, "Playground," is a fantastic pop song whose introductory riff recalls the opening of The Black Sea's "Respectable Street." Over crisp guitars and big drums, Partridge relates his recent money and romantic troubles to schoolyard drama. "Playground," "We're All Light," "I'm the Man Who Murdered Love," and "My Brown Guitar" are all offspring of the sound XTC honed to a monomolecular edge during the '80s-- great hooks, full sound, baroque production values. On the merit of those four songs alone, Wasp Star lives up to its potential as an electrified companion to last year's Apple Venus.

Partridge's peculiar lyrical sensibility is in full force here as well. Sometimes syrupy, often even willfully ditzy, but never hackneyed, Wasp Star's lyrics closely recall Oranges and Lemons in their playfulness and sheer word-per-song density. Even Partridge's occasional patches of bitterness come off as exultant due to their shiny pop settings. The single exception comes with "Wounded Horse," as straight-up a twelve bar blues number as XTC are capable of producing. Colin Moulding's three songs are a bit more subdued and folksy, and perhaps more suited to Apple Venus's sensibility, but they hold up well to the guitar- oriented nature of this album.

What XTC are never really given enough credit for is Partridge's guitarwork. He's an endlessly inventive guitarist, whether backing a verse with bursts of bizarre, inverted chords or playing an all-out jazz-inflected solo. In fact, his strange phrasing and over-the-bar articulation is what got me thinking about linguistics in the first place. Something in his brain makes his guitar sound a certain way, and something in my brain makes that way sound pretty damn good.

It's true that Wasp Star is less thematically linked than Apple Venus, and some have criticized this seeming lack of cohesiveness. But honestly, "cohesive" is a word that crops up in too many record reviews, and if Wasp Star has less of it than other late XTC albums, it doesn't detract from the quality of the album. It's a great bunch of songs, and it solidifies the notion that XTC are back from the wilderness and ready to rock the show. My brain is glad for it.

-Zach Hooker