Here’s where XTC started to truly come into their own. The departure of Andrews left a fairly sizable musical hole that needed filling. But instead of finding someone to replicate his carnivalesque keyboard work, they landed on Dave Gregory, a gent from Swindon who was already wowing locals with his guitar acumen. “He was one of these child prodigies who would go up on stage at the age of 14 playing in rhythm and blues groups, just as good as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton,” Partridge told the XTC fanzine Limelight in 1982.

Gregory didn’t bring any flashy moves to his debut recordings with the band, but like any good player does, he melded in with the collective mindset and found ways to inject his personality into the mix. Listen for his solo on “Life Begins At The Hop,” (the lead track on the U.S. release of Drums & Wires) a relaxed unfurling of muted notes that slides right back into the song’s central melody before you realize what happened. Or his quick jazzy solo on the rumbly ska of “Real By Reel.” Or that infectious two-note lead part that carries the verses of the U.K. edition’s opening track, “Making Plans For Nigel.”

The band responded to this infusion of instrumental vitality by allowing themselves to really stretch out as players and lyricists. The tempos started to slow down (“Nigel,” “Millions,” startling album closer “Complicated Game”), Partridge traded off lead guitar parts with the newest member, and Chambers plays with an added spark and an emphasis on perfectly placed cymbal hits.

Both songwriters train their lenses on matters of the heart and on larger subjects like geopolitics and social mores. The bookended tracks on the UK release of Drums offer great examples of the latter. Moulding thumbs his nose at the preordained lives of the upper crust on “Nigel” and the expectations of suburbia on “That Is The Way,” while Partridge throws his hands up in disgust at the conservative and liberal parties with “Complicated” and presages the current state of government surveillance on “Real By Reel.”

The growing pains of XTC are still present here on album #3. Partridge is a little too pleased with eye-rolling turns of phrase like “She got to be obscene to be obheard” and “Now I eat my daily bread/ and into the tape spool I’ll be fed.” The band also hasn’t completely shaken off the dust of their agitated early days, the stiff-limbed “Outside World” being the most glaring example of this. All the elements are in place, however, and its relative success on both sides of the Atlantic (“Nigel” cracked the top 20 in both the U.K. and Canada) promised a fine future from the band.