Apple Venus, Volume 2: Wasp Star

Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) is the fourteenth and final studio album by the English band XTC, released on Cooking Vinyl/Idea Records on 23 May 2000. It is the second volume of the Apple Venus set and reached the UK Top 40 albums chart. At this point, guitarist and singer Andy Partridge and bassist and singer Colin Moulding were the only two band members left. The duo therefore utilised session musicians on every track to fill in the musical elements that they were incapable of performing themselves. Partridge's daughter Holly made her singing debut on record singing backup vocals in the song "Playground"; she now sings and plays guitar in the English pop-rock group The SheBeats. In 2002 XTC released an instrumental version of the album entitled Waspstrumental. The song "Stupidly Happy" has been featured in an episode of the British teenage drama Skins, and in 2011 it was used in an advertisement for DFS. Colin Moulding's songs were all older material presented for previous albums but rejected due to space or other considerations. "Standing In For Joe" was originally written for aborted 'Bubblegum' album project in the early 1990s and "In Another Life" was originally demoed for Oranges & Lemons.