Best XTC album

[musiclawyer]

I saw a YouTube video of the band doing "Scarecrow People" acoustic live in the MTV studios. It's really great and made me pull out my old LP's from the closet. I don't have anything of theirs after 1983. So to those who kept the flame, please tell me what was their best album.

[flamingyouth]

1. My favorite one is "Drums and Wires."

[maxsolomon]

2. Mummer

barely released in the US, no one else but me likes it, therefore, it is the best. QED.

Dukes of Stratosphear's EP is pretty awesome also.

Worst? Anything this decade or last.

And Skylarking is fricking boring in retrospect.

[Danger Mouse]

3. Skylarking...

'Dear God' y'know?

[mr blur]

4. Post 1983?

Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons

[kwolf68]

5. I don't know much about this band

But I do have "Dear God" on my IPOD and that's a pretty cool song.

[Lex]

13. "Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead"

you might like that one too.

Lots of really great XTC songs out there just waiting for you to enjoy!

[driver8]

6. I love "English Settlement."

Maybe because it's the first album of theirs that I owned.

They have a couple of "Greatest Hits" packages -- that would be a good place to start, too.

[masshole]

15. Agreed

I love the use of acoustic guitars on many of the tracks replacing electrics.

[bbernardini]

7. Has to be "Oranges and Lemons."

With Apple Venus Vol. 1 & 2 coming in a close second. Let's face it, if you've got Pat Mastellotto on drums, you're not going to be making a bad album.

[Beaverhausen]

8. You reminded me- I bought Nonesuch (sp?) and haven't listened to it

I love Oranges and Lemons and Skylarking- but I only have Skylarking on vinyl. Gotta replace that one of these days.

[MonkeyFunk]

9. I love the old stuff

but Nonesuch is the one I put on most often. I just adore it.

[SKKY]

10. Skylarking! Duh...

[Hudgie DeRobertis]

11. My favorite is Black Sea,

with English Settlement a close 2nd.

[Lex]

12. Tie for me between "Skylarking" and "Nonsuch"

and "Oranges and Lemons!"

:hi:

[progressoid]

14. Gonna have to go with Black Sea also.

[XNASA]

16. 'Skylarking'

"a masterpiece of hazy, pastoral imagery; it's futuristic yet quintessentially '80s electronica and backward-looking music hall vaudeville. Several of the songs feature the burr of insect noise and chirruping birdsong, and it's as though the listener is lying in a field under the August sunshine, a million miles away from the industrial grimness of "Making Plans For Nigel". "Summer's Cauldron" is a sedate first track, with Partridge asking "Please don't pull me out / This is how I would want to go." The imagery of "floating like a bug in brandy" in some kind of hermetically sealed, idealised summer is introduced here and is central to the album as a whole. The music segués seamlessly into "Grass," a wistful and haunting yet celebratory song with a confident piano line, exuberantly graceful synth strings and bawdy references to "things we used to do on grass.""

-Insight

I'd say that about sums it up.

[AlCzervik]

17. Fossil Fuel-the singles.