Only a band as rewarding as XTC can also be so infuriating. For every "Making Plans for Nigel" there's a "Grass." While main songwriter Andy Partridge can often pull a song like "The Mayor of Simpleton" right out of the treacle, he's almost as often incapable of avoiding preachy numbers like "Books are Burning."

Sometimes you just want to throttle them. Right after you want to kiss them.

Seven years since Nonesuch and freed from contract hell, XTC have returned with their own label (distributed in the United States by TVT) and a new record, Apple Venus Volume 1. Guitarist Dave Gregory has split, leaving just Partridge and Colin Moulding, and you can feel the loss -- throughout the record there is a pronounced lack of the kind of musical kicks in the pants Gregory could have provided. But while there are small holes, there aren't any huge gaps: in writing an album of largely acoustic and orchestral songs, they've managed to write their way around Gregory's absence.

The memory of Elvis Costello's disastrous collaboration with Burt Bacharach looms largely over XTC's "orchoustic" record -- would they write an album of easy-listening tunes? A batch of soupy ballads? The thought of watching another hero of the new wave of the 1970s slide so gracelessly into middle age wasn't too appealing, but Apple Venus isn't at all awful. In fact, it's pretty good.

It's pretty good in the way that almost all XTC albums -- save their really great records like Black Sea -- are pretty good: there are flashes of incredible, almost transcendent pop moments followed by half-baked or overwrought saccharine.

Venus gets off to a rousing start. "River of Orchids" flows around polyrhythms played on strings and brass, with Partridge's trippy, almost frantic vocal avoiding almost all of them. It will no doubt cause many a rock critic to invoke Phillip Glass, but Partridge had far too much fun putting all the messy pieces together to warrant the comparison. You end up thinking, if this is what "orchoustic" means, sign me up.

Next up, though, is "I'd Like That," melodically as lush but sparely recorded, with just guitars, bass and slapped-thighs for percussion. It'd be a jarring transition if the song wasn't so, well, nice, though given how gentle it is, it's an odd choice for the first single. And it's also Partridge's first misstep on the record: in both this and "Your Dictionary," he can't decide how to connect the end of the chorus with the beginning of the verse -- so he just inserts a little pause, leaving the songs transition-less. It's a lazy tactic, but not a song-killer: you're not mad, you're just disappointed.

"Easter Theatre" and "Harvest Festival" are two more bright stars (the former includes a neat tip of the hat to "She's Leaving Home"), and Moulding's two contributions, "Fruit Nut" and "Frivolous Tonight," while slight, are fun and disarming, recalling Noel Coward more than anything else.

Later, though, Partridge is up to his mean old tricks, hoisting soggy numbers like "Knights in Shining Karma" and well-duh sentiments like "I Can't Own Her." You wonder if these were the songs the other members voted against and Partridge insisted on including.

Near the end of the record come two of its most powerful statements. "Your Dictionary" is the album's one bitter break-up song. (Partridge divorced during XTC's hiatus.) It's really quite nasty, but for all its vitriol ("F. U. C. K./ Is that how you spell 'friend' in your dictionary ... black on black a guidebook for the blind"), you wish Partridge had taken a page from Costello's book and really pushed his metaphor as far as it could go -- see "Everyday I Write the Book," which for all its faults never breaks the bounds of its lyrical concept while exploring every last bit.

Finally, there's "The Last Balloon," which will probably stay with you the longest. To invoke Costello for the third time, it's XTC's "Shipbuilding," and you feel like they've been trying for years to do it. Lush without being overarranged and emotional without being sentimental, it's probably the least catchy song on Apple Venus and the most effective.

Pop radio has moved so far from this band that they're likely to be a kind of curio from now on, the quaint, crazy uncles who didn't so much get left behind as just took a different road. Apple Venus volume 1 -- which will shortly be followed by the electric and "moronic" (Partridge's word) volume 2 -- is the welcome return of the cranky, sometimes exasperating, and almost always worthwhile XTC.