of Moulding's proposed songs would be recorded to preserve democracy in the band, and "occasionally at the expense of some of Andy's often superior offerings. This didn't always go down well, either with Andy or the band, but Colin did have some killer melodies and a sweeter sound to his voice that made a welcome diversion when listening to an album as a whole." Partridge opined that Moulding's songs initially "came out as weird imitations of what I was doing", but by the time of Drums and Wires, "he really started to take off as a songwriter." He was more effused with Moulding's offerings for Skylarking, which included the highest ratio of Moulding songs for any XTC album. On Moulding's bass-playing, Partridge praised his "old-fashioned" tendency to match notes to the bass drum. In Song Stories, Neville Farmer comments that Partridge "is the boss—erratic but willful [and] runs the band on instinct", while Moulding "is the voice of calm ... a foil to Andy's radical side." Music journalist Peter Paphides felt that the songwriters' personalities "couldn't seem more different," with Moulding "phlegmatic, shy, and heartbreakingly pretty" and Partridge an "art-school dropout ... uptight, dominating and extrovert." In Moulding's view, Partridge also typically acted as an "executive producer" for albums while frequently undermining the authority of the actual credited producer. Their recording approaches differed in that Moulding sometimes preferred spontaneous or imperfect performances, whereas Partridge working method was to refine a song through repeated takes. The band occasionally took to the term "Andy-ness" to describe Partridge's studio indulgences. Despite this, they rarely found themselves encumbered by serious creative differences. In 1997, Moulding called one dispute over a Skylarking bass part the "only real argument" between him and Partridge in the band's history. Andrews, Gregory and drummers Barry Andrews, XTC's keyboard player for their first two albums, emerged as a third solo songwriter on the group's second album Go 2, and left the band shortly thereafter. His replacement, guitarist Dave Gregory, did not contribute songs, but was the only one in the band who could score music, and frequently contributed orchestral arrangements. Moulding said that when Andrews was in the band, Partridge had "no kind of foil" to work with, as both musicians were drawn to dissonant harmonies: "[Andy] used to like the real kind of angular, spiky, upward-thrusting guitar ... if one is angular, the other has to kind of straighten