English Settlement

English Settlement is the fifth studio album and first double album by the English rock band XTC, released 12 February 1982 on Virgin Records. It marked a turn towards the more pastoral pop songs that would dominate later XTC releases, with an emphasis on acoustic guitar, 12-string electric guitar and fretless bass. In some countries, the album was released as a single LP with five tracks deleted. The title refers to the Uffington White Horse depicted on the cover, to the "settlement" of viewpoints, and to the Englishness that the band felt they "settled" into the record.

English Settlement received worldwide acclaim Writing for Rolling Stone, Parke Puterbaugh stated: "Once again, XTC has managed the difficult feat of sounding accessible even while moving into evermore abstruse and adventuresome territory. ... The result is a program of numbers that resonate across all manner of invigorating wordplay with a jazzy, stoned ambiance." In Heavy Metal, Lou Stathis wrote that XTC's oft-applied "too clever for their own good" tag was "criminal horseshit" and deemed the album their finest work yet.