*Poll* - The Weakest Link - XTC - English Settlement - R1

My Weakest Link debut. I have chosen the fine XTC work, English Settlement from 1982. Being originally a double LP and with fifteen songs, I invite readers in this first round to check three titles they see as weakest links.




Released 12 February 1982
Recorded October – November 1981
Studio The Manor, Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire, England
Length 72:22 (Standard Version)
48:50 (Single LP Version)
Label Virgin
Producer Hugh Padgham, XTC

Original UK double album

Side One

1. "Runaways" 4:34
2. "Ball and Chain" 4:32
3. "Senses Working Overtime" 4:50
4. "Jason and the Argonauts" 6:07

Side Two

1."No Thugs in Our House" 5:09
2. "Yacht Dance" 3:56
3. "All of a Sudden (It's Too Late) 5:21

Side Three

1. "Melt the Guns" 6:34
2. "Leisure" 5:02
3. "It's Nearly Africa" 3:55
4. "Knuckle Down" 4:28

Side Four

1."Fly on the Wall" 3:19
2. "Down in the Cockpit" 5:27
3. "English Roundabout 3:59
4. "Snowman" 5:03


Not far short of four decades ago, XTC released English Settlement, an album that many critics, both then and since, have regarded as their finest. It’s a release that holds a special place in their discography; but not just for the critical acclaim it garnered. It was an album that marked a specific turning point for the band. Not only did it see them abandon the muscular sound that they had spent nearly a decade honing but its release would also see them stop life as a touring entity all together.

It sometimes gets forgotten that it’s the small, unassuming places that can produce great bands and sounds. A lot of attention gets focused on the big cities, their cultural vibrancy and inherent tension seen as vital components in the creation of music. But not everyone can come from London or Manchester and across the years our collective small towns have yielded many great bands, despite the fact that those same towns might regard am-dram as culturally relevant and still have visiting performances from The Barron Knights.

Swindon exports XTC are a case in point. Not always seen as the coolest of groups and one for whom commercial success deserted them for much of their later career, they were nevertheless a band that were rarely content to stand still; possessed of a back catalogue that embraced many different sounds and genres, including a stint as their neo-psychedelic side-project, The Dukes Of Stratosphear.

QUIETUS REVIEW

English Settlement was something of a watershed moment for XTC; an album that seemed to promise your progression up the music world’s greasy poll, yet untimely marked the point where the band’s popularity started to ebb. How do you look back on it today?

Andy Partridge: I still think it’s a great album, although not my favourite. It was a joy to write and to record and despite what happened I still look back on some of that period fondly. We might have missed our chance at making it really big but in the years that followed we still made some great, critically acclaimed albums and expanded our sound to include other genres.

I do still listen to the album now and then. It sounds especially good when I listen to it when very drunk because then it’s like I’m someone else and I’m hearing it for the first time. And when I do that I realise just how ****ing great it really.

 

I can see a little activity. It would help of course if I could tag the many XTC fans here to alert them of this event... if I knew their names.

 

Now this is interesting.

Three out of four of my own favourite tracks could face the chop unless something dramatic happens on the chalk hills overnight.

I would be okay losing Africa but not Cockpit, Leisure or Guns!

 

It's Nearly Africa
Leisure
Melt The Guns

 

I voted:
Knuckle Down
Leisure
Melt The Guns

 

Leisure
It's nearly Africa
Fly On The Wall

 

A learning curve por moi. I assumed that Leisure and Melt The Guns would be nailed on to be up there with Jason, Thugs and Senses as the marquee songs!

 

I like Melt The Guns but high US membership would suggest that melt the guns won't survive the first round lol

 

Kind of what I'm interested in tbh - how the album is received stateside.

Ah well, let's hear it for Guns anyway - MELT THEM!

 

"Leisure" and "Fly on the Wall" to go.
I love this album, and look forward to the feedback, input, and comments.

 

Melt The Guns
It's Nearly Africa
Fly On the Wall

(Leisure and Cockpit will easily go next -- after that it'll be a lot harder...)

Even though I think there's some chaff in this album, it was my first exposure to XTC (the actual double-vinyl album) and remains one of my favorites by them. Side 3 did not get a lot of play even though "Knuckle Down" is awesome.

 

My second favorite XTX-proper LP (Black Sea #1 although the Dukes' EP and LP are teasured above all), I still am not enamored of either Guns or Yacht in the least. I grudgingly include Roundbout since I have to tag three.

 

The problem with Guns isn't that it's either anti-gun or a message song... Thugs is both a message song and an anti-racist/anti-fascist song but it doesn't come across as heavy handed... Andy successfully threads the needle with the lyrics; it's witty, clever and observational without hitting the listener in the face repeatedly... Guns is the exact opposite... it's an obvious message and delivered in an obvious way... subtle as a flying mallet... methinks it insults a listener's intelligence by underestimating their intelligence... either that, or the lyricist wasn't up to the job of getting it across in a far more clever manner... Thugs it is not...

 

'Leisure' has a great lyrical idea, and a good lyric, but the cod reggae setting makes it, for me, one of the worst things the band ever recorded, in musical terms. There are five real clunkers on the album for me, conveniently packed around Colin's great 'Fly on the Wall', but the rest is all more or less essential, so this is going to be an interesting exercise!

Those clunkers all show Andy struggling with ambitious political and social themes, something he'd get much, much better at pretty fast, but these early efforts are gauche and embarrassing. 'It's Nearly Africa' is so compelling musically that I can just about give it a pass, however.

 

Well, often Andy's political songs come off as strident, shallow as not very tuneful. This one nails all three. It's the only song on the album I actively dislike. Leisure and Knuckle Down have some charm, but are weak spots on a very strong album.

 

+1... can't understand the 6 votes for knuckle down

 

Knuckle Down
Cockpit
English Roundabout

I love everything on this album, so this is tough!

 

Perfectly said, though I'll add that the music itself is bloody awful, and the song would be unlistenable even if Dylan had written the lyrics.

I'll be genuinely surprised if Senses isn't the last song standing at the end of this.

 

I was just joking mate
Andy can be a pain in the butt at times

 

melt the guns was the only one I knew I would vote for initially. picked two tracks that didn't immediately fill my head with nice tunes as the other pair I probably should have a relisten but my choices seem to match the majority so I'll leace it at that until the hard choices in next rounds.

 

Leisure
Snowman
Cockpit

USA fan here btw, but not cuz of this!

 

This is an interesting WL album! It really is a fine album from the band at or near their peak. I hold Black Sea as my favourite, but I also hold Mummer in the highest esteem. And English Settlement fits right in there, sound-wise, between those two. However, for some reason it has never clicked with me as an album. Many of the songs are among their best, but there's also a bunch of songs I'd be hard pressed to remember in my head. I need to go back and re-listen before I can vote here, but I can say that the first half of the album is by far the best, as I remember it.

 

I voted off "English Roundabout" and "Yacht Dance," the only two songs on the album I really dislike, and then "It's Nearly Africa," which I like but not a whole lot (it seems a bit underdeveloped to me), though I considered "Down in the Cockpit," which I also like but not a whole lot.

At any rate, English Settlement is one of my very favorite XTC albums - easily in my top 3. Still, this will be an interesting album for this kind of poll, since I've always felt it would benefit with a bit of pruning.

 

I don't really dislike any of the tracks here but went with Melt the Guns, Leisure, and Africa.

Knuckle Down is underrated, and the soon to be winner is almost too obvious

 

Love Drums & wires, Black sea, Skylarking and Oranges and lemons but have a special place for this one too, just to a lesser extent.

*Nearly Africa
*English roundabout
*Snowman

I've only had and have vinyl copies of this one(always the double)and I wonder if my loss of interest comes mostly from the second LP due to the length of the album. I think it's a brilliant album but I don't listen to it a lot. Question for all the XTC guru's: What's the deal with the north american release of this title? Originally released only as an abbreviated single LP in the US and released as both a double and abbreviated single LP in Canada. It's like the label didn't have faith in the whole thing over here in the colonies!!