Thompson retained Joe Boyd as producer for this 1985 outing, but this was to be the last album that he would record with Boyd behind the controls and the last studio album he would record in England. The album is notable for some sophisticated arrangements and the variety of allusions and topics in the song lyrics - Margaret Thatcher's England, the moors murders, the Koran, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific from which the album's title is derived.