XTC : Classic or Dud.

the Coen brothers of bands

No one ever agrees and everyone just accepts the differences and lack of consensus!

Funk Pop a Roll is such a strange way to end Mummer. great song, a precursor to the even more sly & vicious I Bought Myself a Liarbird

lyrically it's fairly lazy and uninteresting imo, musically it's fine

While you could say that almost every track on Mummer was in some way building on where XTC had been with the previous record, 'Funk Pop a Roll' strikes me as being the track that would most fit snugly on English Settlement.

Black Sea is one of XTC's absolute best records (if not their best) whereas English Settlement is let down by side three.

No-one ever agrees about this band yet here I am agreeing with Turrican.

Let down by side three, who are you people.

We Are The Majority, Ned.

I do think there is some consensus that side 3 is pretty dire (exception being Knuckle Down imo)

You are all high. When I did my relisten the other day "Leisure" was the only one I didn't immediately remember beforehand, and I've been running "It's Nearly Africa" through my head semiconstantly since.

i'll stan for side 3 all day, Melt the Guns into Leisure rules

and yeah It's Nearly Africa is an earworm

English Settlement for me is the butchered tracklist on my import cassette c. 1985 so I just kind of pretend most of side 3 doesn't exist

Black Sea rules because "No Language in Our Lungs" is my favorite XTC song.

I'm not a fan of either 'Leisure' or 'It's Nearly Africa'

Anyway, disagreements from you crazy people aside: the album had come back to mind a few weeks ago when I was thinking about "No Thugs In Our House," which strikes me as relevant to a lot of the present moment -- just add the Internet to Graeme dreaming of a world.

Probably because I'm over-familiar with the shortened US English Settlement, when I listen to unedited whole (as I'm doing today) I'm never all that into the 5 other songs. "Leisure," "Knuckle Down" etc. are okay, but they've never much grown on me.

Black Sea is still my favorite, completely devoid of duds. The bass/guitar interplay is stellar and my favorite song on the album changes every time I listen (it's Towers of London today...that bridge...)

Anyway, disagreements from you crazy people aside: the album had come back to mind a few weeks ago when I was thinking about "No Thugs In Our House," which strikes me as relevant to a lot of the present moment -- just add the Internet to Graeme dreaming of a world.

not to go off topic but I've been thinking about "Divide and Conquer" by Hüsker Dü for the same reasons. Global village, who's gonna stop that burglar from breaking into my house if he lives a million miles away, API Reuters NEWS NEWS!

I finally attempted the full XTC discography the past couple weeks. Some albums dont have me excited when I go back and listen a second time. However, Black Sea is the show steeler of the bunch. I've played it at least 4 times now.

Gotta say, I think at this point of 30+ years of XTC fandom I've become completely unobjective and love basically everything they stamped their name on through "Apple Venus". I adore stuff like "Melt The Guns" and "Human Alchemy" precisely for the wtf aspect of them - they're FUN! And WEIRD! Barry Andrews songs on "Go 2" stick out like a sore thumb, but I love "My Weapon", it's so stoopid! All their b-sides and outtakes are full of little bits that stick in my head. Even the pedestrian stuff like "Senses Working Overtime" hasn't lost it's charm, and the heart-on-sleeve stuff like "Peter Pumpkinhead" and "Dear God" still works for me. Oh, and the dub experiments are great too!

I'm drowning here in XTC's cauldron...

Good lord senses working overtime pedestrian???

Yeah, u crazy - listen to the bass line in the verses, holy shit, that's some from-Mars pop right there.

Compared to the rest of their catalog - pedestrian.

Popular, certainly, but to call it pedestrian! even compared to their other songs, it's not a very normal pop song, with the loopy verses and the long bridge. In fact, I'm surprised it was ever a hit. Now some of the Wasp Star songs, sure...

To chime in on the ES side 3 debate, "Leisure" and "Knuckle Down" are my two least favorite songs on the album, "Melt the Guns" was #26 on my XTC poll ballot, "It's Nearly Africa" was #3.

Been listening to English Settlement recently and the thing that grabs me is the harsh steeliness of the production, which in many ways is reflected by some of the lyrics. It has a gritty, industrialised quality which isn't immediately appealing to my ears but might grow on me, who knows? Songs like 'No Thugs In our House' are amazing, lyric-wise, but without a lyric sheet I'd be at a loss to explain what the song was about, which is a shame. It's almost like the music was arranged around the lyric, and that makes it sound awkward and fascinating at the same time

Hot take on ES Side 3: defo a weak side, blame Andy's lyrics.

Currently looking out for a more reasonably-priced copy of Transistor Blast, can't really justify spending ~£30 on it right now, no matter how nice a set it looks.

xpost:

It's the weakest side of vinyl they ever put out!

lol I also don't really care about "Senses"! English Settlement is a hard album for me to *love*, even tho I know it's a great, ambitious, very unique record. "Senses" is maybe one of the most "normal" sounding songs on it, and one that wouldn't sound out of place even on something as late as O&L (albeit '89-isized). Maybe too normal for me?

IMO if "Snowman" is the towering monolith of odd and magical greatness on that record, then "Senses" is the concession to someone's idea of a hit pop single.

Partridge's vocal choices on the verses doesn't strike me as a pop concession; they foil the conventional chime of the chorus. I love "Snowman" too.

yeah, my wife once described them as "whiney"

I find that most XTC albums I've heard are front-loaded to fuck on the whole

I like the pastoral verses and the Beano-comic pre-chorus of 'Senses' but not a huge fan of the chorus. As a whole, I don't think it's their greatest song and was surprised it did so well in the ILM poll

Sometimes I think I'm getting bored of 'Senses Working Overtime', but if I'm honest with myself I'm still not bored of it. Sure, it gets far more attention than many other XTC songs that should get just as much but it's still a great song - and it's not really what I would consider to be straightforward, aside from perhaps the choruses.

Snowman and Jason & the Argonauts are its equal if not superior, true

i love that madly cycling youmightbethegoldenfleecethehumanrichesarereleased buildup section

Yeah, 'Jason and the Argonauts' totally deserves to me that long... expert use of tape phasing, too. 'Melt the Guns', on the other hand...

rules

Jaaaason

and

the

Ar-go-naauuuuuuuughts

'Melt the Guns' is an over-inflated turd, IMO... and the obnoxious outro is a perfect example of padding.

Willfully, delightfully obnoxious IMO. It's like the repetitious, noisy, dub-influenced experiments of "Scissor Man" and "Complicated Game" (and the whole Explode Together album.)

'Complicated Game' rules, though!

w Melt the Guns, honestly I just love the chords and the bassline. Colin should've played fretless even more than he did! A ton of momentum in that song for me

Eh. Colin's intonation on English Settlement isn't the greatest.

I hate Funk Pop a Roll

Count me in as another Melt the Guns stan. The lyrics are kind of on the nose, but the music is ace. And I think the bludgeoning outro is fabbo.

I find that most XTC albums I've heard are front-loaded to fuck on the whole

― Shat Parp (dog latin), Thursday, September 21, 2017 2:52 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You couldn't have heard very many of 'em, then!

I can’t listen to Turrican in this thread cuz he hated on Melt The Guns