A whopping 17 songs on this effort, which would be XTC's last album for many years. It's a mature, well rounded work that combines the lush, orchestrated pop of "Skylarking" with the bright, bubblegum psychedelia of "Oranges & Lemons". Thus, more Beatlesque bliss for XTC.

Both Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding wear their influences on their sleeves big time; Lennon, McCartney, Wilson, Davies, even Burt Bacharach.

"Then She Appeared" is a major standout with spot-on Beach Boys-like harmonies, shimmering guitar lines, and all the like. A sunny, upbeat pop masterpiece. And it wasn't even released as a single!

Also pop perfect is "The Disappointed" which sounds like XTC doing Tears for Fears doing The Beatles. This album showcases a band who can obviously write beautiful hooks and melodies in their sleep at this point.

Partridge is also a great storyteller; witness "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead", a more guitar driven pop/rocker. Is it about JFK? Jesus? An actual pumpkin? Total lyrical mastery. The wonderful "Holly Up On Poppy" musically combines brooding psychedelia with bouncy pop in yet another wonderful song. Also worth noting is "Dear Madam Barnum", another guitar-driven pop number with great lyrics. Who writes lyrics this clever anymore? He really is one of the most gifted songwriters of all time..his wit even puts some of his idols to shame at time.

Partridge reaches a new level of sophistication on songs like "Rook" and "Wrapped in Grey". The former is a cryptic, downbeat piano-led poem (of sorts) which Partridge said reduced him to tears when he wrote it (as it just came out of nowhere). The latter showcases that Bacharach influence I eluded to before (as well as a heavy dose of Brian Wilson); like "Rook", it's also a piano/string section led chamber pop number. This one alternates from somber verses to a cheery, celebratory chorus. Both are among Partridge's best compositions.

Colin Moulding also turns in his most musically mature composition to date with "Bungalow"; The song travels from a cheesy organ-laden intro to rich, lush piano passages. It sounds like some long lost Tin Pan Alley classic.

Mouldings other tunes are also very good. "Smartest Monkeys" travels down a cliched lyrical path, but the music is strong and catchy. And Dave Gregory turns in an awesome solo (which sounds like a processed guitar, but is actually a synth I believe). "My Bird Performs" is sublime, and features some nice trumpet work.

Other album highlights include the lush, psychedelic "Humble Daisy" (think Lennon meets Brian Wilson), the tense "That Wave", the celebratory "Omnibus" (which sounds like something out of a musical), and the closer "Books Are Burning", a mid-tempo masterpiece which makes a common chord progression sound fresh.

XTC are so good at making sophisticated, smart pop music that it's depressing. Why? Because I can't find many other bands who can equal them. It's a shame that very few people have even heard of them.

I really can't find enough superlatives to describe this album. When so many groups seem to exhaust their creative abilities in one album, Partidge and Moulding continue to grow as songwriters, producing better melodies, arrangements and lyrics with every record.

XTC started as a sort of punk band with "White Noise" but rapidly evolved into one of the best exponants of the melodic British Pop tradition that seems to have started with the Beatles and continues on through groups like 10CC, Squeeze and a few others.

Nonesuch has an amazing range of styles, from the hard-rocking Peter Pumkinhead to the lyrical "My Bird Performs" and the dark "Rook". There's fiercely biting social commentary in "The Smartest Monkeys", traditional English ballad in "Wrapped in Grey" and many other delights.

The more I listen to Nonesuch, the more I become absolutely enchanted with it. Certainly one my desert island albums, and maybe, just maybe the finest British Pop album ever.

I consider myself a late comer to XTC fandom, having really only started getting into them in the mid nineties when I finally purchased copies of Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons, which were for the longest time two of my most favourite non-Beatle pop albums. The thing is, I've known XTC music most of my life, but didn't really become a fan until that point, and even then, my love was conditional. I then heard tracks from Nonsuch and was sadly nonplussed. A real 2/5 effort, to my mind.

And that is exactly how it would have stayed if XTC hadn't gone on to record Apple Venus/Wasp Star, perhaps the finest swansong any band could hope for. Here we are in 2010, and after having listened to AV/WS many times, I suddenly find myself reaching back for my copy of Nonsuch, and lo and behold, find that it is a hidden masterpiece. Indeed, my musical tastes have matured some, but I was listening to Frank Zappa's Yellow Shark and King Crimson as well as my beloved Yes and Genesis and the Beatles, and truly felt like I understood where Nonsuch had come from.

I just didn't get it. But now I do. I have trouble explaining how it's crept up on me, but I now see it as perhaps their finest album, which is a very difficult thing for me to type, given my love of AV/WS. It just does so many wonderful things, and truly ahead of the curve. They took so many chances, which at this point in my life causes me to think that it is the album I should have been listening to all this time. Just a wonderful album, and if they had never recorded AV/WS. I'd still think they went out on a stroke of genius.

For those that awarded this album 1 or 2 stars, I ask you to set the album aside for a few years, go do something else, and then come back to it when you find yourself wishing they'd made more albums. Then see if this album doesn't actually surprise you the way it did me.

If you love rich lyrics, challenging yet sweeping arrangements, complex and addicting melodies, then look no further to this 1992 album of XTCs last work before they went on strike. From songs of loss to social jabs XTC lose none of their thrust and power, and wrap it all in the tastiest coating imaginable in the recording arts. Marvel at the production (drum sound on Peter Pumpkinhead), tremble at the intimacy (crawl inside Rook if you dare), air guitar along (Books are Burning, Smartest Monkeys), but you will love this album. And at under $7, what the heck have you got to lose? Listen to the piss and pathos of Andy's singing and let the magical XTC lift your spirit up and fire a few shots into your soul... you won't come away the same.

Today's British and American pop music artists are firmly grounded in the broader discourse of post-industrial philosophy and poetics, and in the search for religious meaning and national identity through the excavation and exploration of mythologies that Western writers, philosophers, and poets have been working in for centuries. Pop musicians such as XTC have taken on a dual role both as subversive critics of society and government within the public sphere of popular music, and as post-modern lyricists. This new approach to music begins to appear in their now classic album English Settlement (1982), a clear departure from their previous dance-oriented albums, which explores political, social, and mythological themes in the context of contemporary urban England. Subsequent albums by the band paint a richer picture of both urban and rural scenes, as the band reaches back further in time to draw on the pre-modern corpus of English, European, and Greek mythology. Their trio of albums that came out in the late 1980s and early 1990s--Skylarking (1986), Oranges & Lemons (1989), and Nonsuch (1992)--can be considered a trilogy. Each album builds on images and themes of the previous album, collectively evoking a rich tapestry of both Christian and pagan imagery, including folk tales from pre-modern England, and the mythology of ancient Greece, set in contrast with dreary depictions of post-industrial England and a war weary world. Nonsuch, arguably their richest album to date, is a rhapsodic call of awakening into the colorful dreamscape of animism and poetic resonances that underlies our dismal modern "real world" existence, as exemplified by Andy Partridge's call to "awaken you dreamers" from the state of the "loveless ones" who dwell in a "world wrapped in grey." Who are the "loveless ones?" They are the ones chained inside the Platonic cave of material reality that constitutes the grid-like world of mills, mines, factories, streets, apartments, offices, laboratories, schools, and prisons in the modern age of science and industry. Our infatuation with these institutions prevents us from seeing beyond to the deeper structures of nature and human history that lie behind our immediate visual universe. This is a task that England's Romantic poets and American transcendental philosophers dedicated themselves to during the previous century. Inheriting these and other philosophical and literary enterprises, XTC impells us to look beyond the confining strictures of the material or "rational" world by employing the vast powers of the collective lyrical imagination that have been constructed through the literature and music of the pre-modern world.

AF