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Product Description
24 Bit Digital Remaster! 5th album: originally a 2LP set of sprawling acoustic/electric rock!
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
As someone who wasn't born when this album came out, i fell accross this as they were listed as an influence on a number of currentbands, perhaps most notably 'Dogs Die In Hot Cars'. However, how happy I was, Partridge as a purveyor of perfect pop must be up there with the very best, his songs are funny, touching, and impossibly catchy. For me this is his and the rest of the band (particularly Moulding)'s best work, and what's more it's a double album, though it's no white album, there are 2 great albums here not 1. That's not to say that the body of work's not coherent as a whole, it is not an album of two halves. What of the songs, well, it's a feast for the ears, just so many awesome tracks, and here i feel i have to agree with the other reviewer's comments, that you find yourself asking yourself if each song is in fact the greatest pop song ever. Personal favourites would be 'Ball and Chain', 'Jason and the Argonaughts', 'No Thugs In Our House', 'All of a Sudden', 'Snowman', but there is not a single track i don't enjoy and which would be a standout on the albums of today's imitators.
I only hope that as they continue to influence others so more people will discover this album, and the many other great XTC albums, and they might achieve the retrospective acclaim they deserve.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Everyone with an interest in good music remembers Senses Working Overtime. Believe it or not - it's not the best track on this record! Although it's difficult to pick a best track to be honest - if you liked Making plans for Nigel, try Knuckle down.If you liked Generals & Majors, try No Thugs In Our House. If you're a Drums&Wires fan, try Down in the Cockpit. Its all here! This album is a veritable dictionary of XTC - all their musical guises are present. Look at it like this, buy the brilliant single - Senses Working Overtime, and get a free 14 tracks thrown in! The price is worth it even for that one song.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is the album that marked the end of one XTC era and the beginning of a new, exciting, bold period for the band. Andy broke down while touring to promote the album and wouldn't tour again - which prompted Terry Chambers to get fed up and emigrate to Australia, leaving the band to hire a different drummer for consequent albums and free to march a dizzying path through numerous styles of music over the next twenty years.
I bought this album on its release twenty years ago because I had liked Sgt Rock and Making Plans... This album utterly entranced me like no other album ever has. Partridge and Moulding write brilliant, thought provoking, intelligent songs bundled up in the most enthralling, original and enduring arrangements of pop music you could imagine. And yes, they are still doing it today.
Everyone in their mid to late twenties and older will know the joyous single that reverberates to Dave's beautiful black twelve string Rickenbacker and Andy's proclamation of the joy of being alive in Senses Working Overtime. Few people will know the other songs that treat you to an hour or more of a multitude of aspects of living life in England. Not the United Kingdom, but decidely England. Post Kinks, pre Blur - or maybe the Kinks are pre XTC and Blur are post XTC. All three quintessentially English, non more consistent that this quartet from Swindon who -in this album - take us through destroying homes in the name of progress; children running away from their violent parents; the debilitating effects of long term unemployment; the woman who was so cold and unemotional through to the joys of life; seizing the moment of being alive; the fragility of love and so on and so forth.
I have heard people say the album is starting to sound a little old now; it's hard for me to say because I know it and love it so so well. Even if it is sounding a little dated it's still an album to fall in love with. Go on - have an affair.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Ok so I'm from Swindon
Loved XTC from day one and saw them tons of times. So I'm a fan but ignore that 'cause I'm sure you're thinking okay it must be one of their mates, if only! Read more
Published 13 months ago by andy furkins
One of the Best Albums Ever.
I used to have a tape of this (remember tapes?)way back in the C60 C90 C120 days. And it was way back then that I recorded this from a borrowed album. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mr. S. Morris
And I've got 1-2-3-4-5 stars for XTC's best album!
Rating: 9.5/10
Best tracks: "Ball and Chain", "Snowman", "Fly on the Wall", "Runaways", "Senses Working Overtime"
The absolute apex of XTC's entire output,... Read more
Best tracks: "Ball and Chain", "Snowman", "Fly on the Wall", "Runaways", "Senses Working Overtime"
The absolute apex of XTC's entire output,... Read more
Published on 6 Mar 2010 by New Gold Dreamer
New Wave Masterpiece
This album from 1982 is perhaps the most slickest innovative new wave album of the eighties and a real mind trip listening experience of abstract minor melody sounds and sweeping... Read more
Published on 21 Nov 2009 by JC
the world doesn't know what it's missing
Perhaps it is good the majority of the general public don't know XTC's music. It means those of us that do can feel we are part of one of the most fantastic 'private clubs'... Read more
Published on 9 Nov 2009 by Stuart Cox
The golden fleece of double albums
How many ways do i love this album? Well fifteen since i asked as that's the number of tracks on my vinyl LP version and unlike most double albums, indeed unlike most albums of any... Read more
Published on 5 July 2008 by russell clarke
I'd forgotten how good this was
Anyone buying quality music in the early 80s may well have ended up with this on vinyl. Shamefully I have only just replaced this in my collection (having long ago run out of... Read more
Published on 13 Jun 2008 by Mist of Time
Vintage music
Still have my XTC vinyls, a bit scratched from rough handling, and it is surprising how well the music has stood the test of time (with some few exceptions). Read more
Published on 26 Mar 2008 by Staffan Ernstsson
English Settlement - English Genius
I bought this album when it first came out, and played it and played it and played it, and am still continuing to play it 20 odd years on. Read more
Published on 13 Jan 2008 by lovemurakami
brilliant for a "transitional" album....
By this time XTC had progressed from being new wave upstarts,through the light and then power pop of "Drums & Wires" & "Black Sea" to a bridging point between the latter and... Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2007 by bish
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