On Land and In The Sea

On Land and in the Sea is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Cardiacs. It was recorded and mixed in 1988 at The Slaughterhouse studios in Yorkshire, produced by Cardiacs band leader Tim Smith and engineered by Roger Tebbutt.

The album is seen by many fans as being the definitive Cardiacs release. It was the last to feature the "classic" sextet line-up of the band which had been in place since 1984. Saxophonist and backing singer Sarah Smith left the band shortly before the album was released, and both keyboard player William D. Drake and percussionist Tim Quy would have departed before the release of the next studio album (1992's Heaven Born and Ever Bright).

The album was less overtly conceptual than its predecessor - 1988's A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window - lacking that album's more explicit lyrical focus on childhood, warfare, the workplace and the loss of innocence. The album's lyrics also featured a number of cut-and-paste quotes or paraphrases from the work of the nineteenth-century Irish poet George Darley (in the songs "Arnald" and "Mare’s Nest").

On Land and in the Sea received some of the best reviews of Cardiacs' career. Noting the band's previous role as "fruitcake purveyors of irreverent, florid, and pomp-ish pop, both harking back to the early ‘70s and ridiculing that period’s excesses," Q's Henry Williams described the album as "a tour-de-force" and "a scary and unanticipated triumph," referring to the music's "manic, cackling pace" and comparing Cardiacs' work to both The Small Faces and Peter Hammill. In Melody Maker, Andrew Smith described it as the first album to have captured "the full majesty of their sound" and dubbed it "insanely sharp; one continuous, sweeping, collection of sawn-off epic joy... a deeply satisfying album." He also noted "When I listen to The Cardiacs, I hear echoes of Broadway musical – in the unapologetic, audacious breadth and scale of their sound – as well as the inscrutably Germanic qualities of a Brecht or Eisler (both of whom would have loved this album). In fact, The Cardiacs are very Brechtian: they never allow the listener to settle into passive receptivity. What astonished me is the amount of energy they expend. It’s not always very elegant, which is why some people have difficulty with it, I suspect, but in a world run by designers and advertising men, who needs elegance?"

On Land and in the Sea was originally issued by Alphabet Business Concern in 1989 on vinyl LP, cassette, and CD. The Dutch record label Torso released the album on CD with the inclusion of five extra tracks. The album was reissued on CD in 1995 (minus the bonus tracks) along with the rest of Cardiacs' back catalogue. After a brief period of unavailability during the mid-2000s, the album was re-pressed in August 2007 and is currently available on the band's official website.