Vinyl Tap: XTC - Nonsuch

I get a new turntable and dust off some old records. Vinyl Tap #62:

Life begins at the hoppin’ pop-rock sounds of XTC, and it never seems so seamlessly so with than with the British group’s cohesive and resplendent 1992 release, from a recording career conspicuous by its Nonsuch. Coming out on the heels’n’peels of a neo-psychedelic squeeze of Oranges & Lemons — when XTC sounded like, say, toned-down Dukes of Stratosphear music minus the Mellotron, backward looping, and Nehru jackets – Nonsuch is an understated masterwork of precision pop production by Gus Dudgeon, made up of 17 tracks of characteristic craftsmanship (mostly by Andy Partridge), noted for musical whimsy and wistfulness, replete with effortless infectiousness, lyrical poignancy and wit. All in all, Nonsuch is so much XTC excellence.

And it all starts with "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead," the most rollicking XTC opening track since the Kinks-size kick-off on 1980’s Black Sea, “Respectable Street.” The herky-jerky “Crocodile” is a more direct evocation for its recall of the up-and-front rhythms of 1979’s Drums and Wires, while the more hummable and hook-driven “Dear Madam Barnum” proves a saga is born every RPM.

“Omnibus,” an alternate “Penny Lane” of sorts, seems to be a summons for ambivalence or delirium when a driver casts an invitation to “find a friend unfound”: “Put your foot upon the laughing gas / And drive your grin around.”

On the other hand, another song, the logically slightly less upbeat but yet almost disturbingly bouncy standout “The Disappointed,” belies its somber lyrics:

The disappointed
Are coming in their millions
They're spilling from the bus
At a monument to us
Made of bits of broken heart
The disappointed
Are growing every second
They blot the sun to black
At the bottom of the pack
I'm the king of broken hearts

Lovely mid-tempo tunes come with “Holly Up on Poppy” and the Pet Sounds of “Humble Daisy,” both of which set up the spotlight for Nonsuch’s highlights – the  lilting if off kilter “Then She Appeared” and the gorgeous offering that comes “Wrapped in Grey,” two songs that need to tread around the album's weakest tracks ( though that's still high enough praise), “That Wave” — which may be a tsunamic  parody of Tears for Fears’s “Sowing the Seeds of Love” — and Colin Moulding’s heavy-handed “War Dance”(Everyone wants a slice of / The jingoistic cake).

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, when not engaged in serious lollygagging. …

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