Monocled Alchemist

LP reviewed in Melody Maker, 13th February, 1982

XTC |ENGLISH SETTLEMENT | (Virgin V 2223) MORE to this bunch than meets the eye, if you ask me. Having established themselves as experimentalists of distinction, XTC have gradually grown into classicists.

Whether this course will sell them any records is anybody’s guess, but for hacks hungry for some plastic to get stuck into on a winter’s evening it’s a Godsend.

“Senses Working Overtime” was a crucial clue to the goods on offer on “English Settlement”, a double album packed with enough material and ideas to occupy the enquiring mind for many an hour.

XTC | English Settlement | (Virgin) 1982

Don’t expect fast dance action or the latest Chinese jodhpurs. Andy “Ted Moult On Speed” Partridge is far too wily and eccentric for any of that.

Instead, XTC here plot a bold course into a surprisingly rich and romantic vein of English culture. I nearly said “history”, but that’s not quite it — certainly, the lush dark green packaging with its suggestions of Piltdown Man, its facsimile of a horse carved out of some hillside in the West Country and Anglo-Saxon lettering plug right into Steve Hillage territory, but these are clues free from the pervasive irony which these songs are steeped in.

Check “Leisure”, for example. An artfully assembled piece, it has Partridge bluntly torpedoing the theorists of the New Age of Leisure which will supposedly have to come now that full employment is allegedly a thing of the past.

Perhaps the most striking stylistic trait of “Settlement” is its reliance on acoustic guitars in place of the electric beast. “Senses Working Overtime” is typical in this respect, crammed with chunky, ringing guitars and simple, spacious percussion. Roger McGuinn meets Martin Carthy.

Point is, XTC use this robustly traditional feel to probe very modern preoccupations. Take “Melt The Guns”, for example. Its playful feel, vocal whoops and thrumming acoustic guitars carry a lyric a million miles from cucumber sandwiches and the chiming church bells of “Senses”:

“We’ve trapped the cause of the plague in the land of the free and the home of the brave /If we listen quietly we can hear them shooting from grave to grave.”

XTC | English Settlement | (Virgin) 1982

The idea of “history” at work here reaches forward as well as back. Both “Down In The Cockpit” and “English Roundabout” weld the rich simplicity of the current XTC sound with a modified but energetic ska feel.

In “Cockpit”, Terry Chambers’ firmly accurate percussion is enlivened with vastly reverbed punctuations (on tom tom?), while warm, elegant guitar twines round the stem of the song.

And the lyric? Again, ambitious stuff:

“All the way through history girls have the brain to act like the weaker sex. Down in the cockpit man need the woman to pull him right out of it.”

Best moments for me are the exhilarating rush of guitars in “Ball And Chain”, the jazzy interpolations in “Leisure”, and “Senses” — I’m sure that’s a list that’s going to grow.

So, music of quality and distinction from the Swindon madmen. Not so much an album, more of A Work. — (Adam Sweeting).

LP reviewed in Sounds, 13th February, 1982

XTC ‘English Settlement’ (Virgin V2223)***** IT’S ALL very well for professional rock and roll intellectuals like me to go around proclaiming that ‘English Settlement’ is one of the richest albums to emerge from an English band for many a month.

The fact is that a double studio album from XTC is scarcely the kind of move guaranteed to grab them the mega-uranium status that both they and their record company hanker after.

The irony is that if you’re prepared to let it, ‘English Settlement’ is probably XTC’s most accessible album since their first. And there’s the rub. How many people are prepared to give a double album four or five whirls for an even break?

The prevailing mood is one of space and relaxation in contrast to their earlier more frenetic characteristics, which often sounded as though they were trying to pack an album’s worth of ideas into each track. Not that there’s any wasted space either.

XTC | English Settlement | (Virgin) 1982

The album is riddled with cunning vocal and musical asides that reveal themselves in successive plays. After living with a tape for a couple of weeks, I feel that I’m only just getting to grips with what this album has to offer. Which you can take as a recommendation or a warning, depending on your state of inverted snobbery.

The presence of an acoustic guitar across most of the four sides in a strumming or even a plucking capacity only adds to the pastoral atmosphere, as well as a precision and clarity about the whole sound.

But Terry Chambers‘ drumming —for which the word brilliant is scarcely sufficient — makes sure that the only time they turn soft is when they want to. The more obvious commercial ploys, otherwise known as the earliest hits, are piled up at the Sharp end.

The calculated cool of ‘Runaways’ with its haunting tune and echo-drenched one-finger piano solo is a surprisingly gentle lead-in, and while the staccato ‘Ball And Chain’ is more recognisably XTC it has a pomp-rock synthesiser solo that would have them shifting uncomfortably on their principles if we didn’t already know that they’re just another pop band (tee hee — only joking).

And ‘Senses Working Overtime’ is a superb example of how they’ve disciplined their own senses without compromising anything of their essential character.

XTC | English Settlement | (Virgin) 1982

From then on it’s an extended ramble along the XTC highways and byways which is never short on musical or lyrical ideas. Pick any track at your leisure and you’ll find a wealth of potent pop which comes dangerously close to art.

The delightful ‘No Thugs In Our House’ at the beginning of side two concerns the son of a judge who is caught mugging Asians by the police to the disbelief of his parents. And a few minutes later they get deceptively mellow and laid back on ‘All Of A Sudden’ until the lyrics get through to unnerve you.

The band’s continued refusal to rhyme moon with June reaches a peak on side three where they obstinately concern themselves with issues of social relevance.

Melt The Guns

‘Melt The Guns’ is a pithy plea for gun control among the under fives while ‘Leisure’ is an abrasive, angular song that starts with lines like “They taught me how to work but they can’t teach me how to shirk correctly,” and winds up with the witty refrain “Lazy bones, looking through the Sun, how you gonna get your day’s work done?”

And ‘Knuckle Down’ is a cogent plea against mindless mob violence. As the album progresses the rhythms get more dub-like and the voices bend themselves into weird and wonderful contortions on occasion.

Not only are they now extremely adept at the art of recording, they’ve also got a keen sense of their own individual abilities and how best to use them as a group.

And just in case you find the double album isn’t enough, “you can buy the hit single and find three more new songs. You can get that hooked on it, honest. (Hugh Fielder)

LP reviewed in Record Mirror, 13th February, 1982

XTC: ‘English Settlement’ (Virgin V2223) ***** THE SWINDON mop tops have done it again. Their fifth album ‘English Settlement’ sees them stepping on the accelerator again after the consolidation of their last set ‘Black Sea’.

This two album set will delight those already enamoured by their fresh perspective on the pop formula, while those detractors who willingly coat them in a veil of over intellectual pretention will have to think again.

Despite a noticeable lack of frantic energy that has characterised earlier vinyl displays they have learnt a different kind of tension. The Invention and whimsy of Andy Partridge, the dexterity of guitarist Dave Gregory, the big beat and splash of drummer Terry Chambers and the melody of Colin Moulding have combined into an altogether lighter mixture than before.

XTC | English Settlement | (Virgin) 1982

The accent is now on the songs rather than on percussion based Inventions. The hand of the 60’s, with it’s intuitive feel for melody, pop and understated power of word and sound, all distorted by a streak of friendly insanity, is distinctly apparent.

In fact, XTC, along with Squeeze, are the natural heirs to that inspiring English pop that The Kinks, Small Faces and The Beatles at their peaks used to weave into golden three minute packages.

The 15 track set is split with four songs credited to Colin Moulding and the rest to Partridge. Moulding’s compositions show him to have the defter touch with melody from the dreamily surreal lightness of the opener ‘Runaways’ to the excellent ‘Fly On The Wall’.

Partridge’s brand of songwriting has always veered towards percussive but the propulsion and energy is now deployed with greater skill. The power comes from an even greater reliance on the interweaving of sound textures.

Listen to the swirling homage to psychedelia ‘Jason And The Argonauts’ where notes rapidly drip onto the cushion of Chambers drums.

XTC | English Settlement | (Virgin) 1982

Lyrically Partridge has increased his attack on stagnant attitudes by piecing images together into a potent fist that hits its target hard.

Witness ‘No Thugs In Our House’, an aggressive look at out-of-touch parenthood. His penchant for scatting has been welded into a useful tool on the softer touches of ‘Yacht Dance’ and to balance ‘Melt The Guns‘, an overlong sermon, there are the pure plop aggregations of ‘Down In The Cockpit’, the single ‘Senses Working Overtime’ and the rolling ‘Knuckle Down’.

The band have used a wider range of instrumentation and, far from allowing the increased resources to get in the way, they have achieved a perfect balance with ‘English Settlement’ that must finally put paid to the old jibes of overindulgence.

XTC have made the first indispensable record of 1982 and I’d advise you to settle down with a copy at the first opportunity. (Mike Gardner)