It’s remarkable to consider that the same two songwriters behind this collection of scratchy, hyperactive post-punk are the same men who, two decades later, would create a masterwork of multi-colored pop. I’m sure Partridge and Moulding also look back at the skinny, furtive gents on the cover of this LP and chuckle ruefully.

By all rights, XTC’s debut album features fewer moments of greatness than Oranges (a sentiment the folks who made it would hopefully agree with). But it manages to slot just above it because it is a textbook representation of the overwhelming impact of punk rock on a nation’s youth.

If you have any doubts about that, give a look at this video of the band in 1974, back when XTC called themselves the Helium Kids. Note the shoulder-length hair, and the music that aims to mesh prog rock complexity into the grooves of ’70s boogie rock. In just a few years, they’d all have close-cropped locks, skinny trousers, and a biting attitude that resulted in these firecracker bursts of new wave pop.

The energy certainly suits them, as this album gives the impression that could it fall to pieces or fly off the rails at any moment. But this is a road-tight quartet that has been perfecting these songs over years of rehearsals and gigs. They sound sinewy, lean, and ready for action.

By and large, this first edition of XTC had the songs to match that spirit. “Spinning Top” is two-and-a-half minutes of herky-jerky joy, capped off by Andrews and Partridge synchronizing for a quick, sci-fi soundtrack solo. The quickly dispensed with “Do What You Do” is custom built for sweaty pogo dancing, as is the snotty suburbia kiss-off “Into The Atom Age” (Andrews’ organ melodies really shine on this one). Even better is the album’s single “Statue Of Liberty,” a devilish ode to the New York landmark that managed to get banned by the BBC due to its line of sailing beneath Lady Liberty’s skirt.

When the band stumbles on this debut, though, they fall hard. They make a misguided attempt at dragging Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” into the punk age, wonky harmonica solo and all. The original version of “This Is Pop?” can’t hold a candle to fist-pumping re-recording they did just a few months later. And in a rare early misstep, Moulding never seems to find his legs with this jumped-up sound on “I’ll Set Myself On Fire” and “Cross Wires.”

To be entirely fair to the band, White Music is a document of a group still finding its feet as songwriters and cogs in the music industry. The rest of XTC’s long career turned out to be them trying to reconcile the two ideas that one could still be great at the former without sacrificing the needs of the latter. But as an opening salvo, it’s a fine one that all too often gets glossed over when the band’s career is explored en masse.