When it sounds like this, I do! (Do You Like Rock Music? - British Sea Power)

Name: sonic0209

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Product:	Do You Like Rock Music? - British Sea Power
Date:	17/02/08 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful sound, the soundtrack to our landscape, laced with English eccentricity

Disadvantages: too few to mention

As the years march on I become more difficult to please. With such a rich history of Rock, Pop and Indie behind us, it is quite difficult for bands to come up with something really new. That's not to say that music is only good if it's never been done before, not at all, but if you are going to be derivative, you have to be pretty good at it, otherwise there will be plenty of bands in the back catalogue to listen to before people get to you.

This year I fell for British Sea Power, a little late as they released their 3rd album in January, but it is not often these days that I get truly excited about a band.

You can hear a lot of influences in the music, probably different people will hear different things, but I can hear the Buzzcocks, The Jam, Sonic Youth, the Lightening Seeds, and Blur. There is nothing particularly revolutionary in the sound, but they are well crafted songs and they do make a quite beautiful noise. What really makes the band stand out for me, though, is their attitude. They are very enthusiastic about their loves, and their loves are not conventional: fell walking, bird watching, Montgomery and Betjeman. The songs on the album are also unconventional in their subject matter, but poetic in a subtle and confusing way. They are also faintly nostalgic, in a warm and very English way.

A classic example of all this quirkiness is the track 'Canvey Island', which is about a flood that took place in that area in 1953, or rather about any kind of unexpected disaster 'brace yourself for storms and summer drought'. The song starts slow, quiet and deliberate 'H5N1, killed a wild swan. It was a kind of omen, of everything to come', but the song builds until the guitars at the end ring out in a way not unlike my old favourites, Sonic Youth.

Another classic example is 'The Great Skua' which is an instrumental named after a sea bird. The song rolls and soars so that you can hear the ocean crashing and picture the great bird flying overhead.

There are, of course, more conventional indie rock songs on this album - the album really kicks into gear with 'Lights out for Darker Skies' which opens with a great riff. Yet whilst you may think you're heading for a bog standard, but very catchy, indie track, the lyrics take you somewhere different ('we dance like sparks from a muzzle' and 'we'll fill our fluorescent sails'). The change in tempo and mood towards the end of the song builds into a crescendo of guitar that shines like the 'history of light' of the lyrics.

At times their lyrics are quite impenetrable. 'No Lucifer' (one of the singles from the album) is a gentle song that doesn't bear much interpretation, with it's references to Carlton Corsair and Raleigh Twenty (bikes from the 70s - presumably from the band's youth), The Anti-Aircraft Brigade, Hitler Youth and Silk and Cyanide (which I believe is a reference to the book by Leo Marks about a World War II cryptographer). It also features the chant 'Easy, easy, easy' a throw back to Big Daddy wrestling performances. It's almost as if they've thrown everything in to see what'll stick. I'm sure it must all means something, but I'm not going to analyse too hard, I just like the nostalgic quality of the subject matter.

'Down on the Ground', 'A Trip Out' and 'Atom' are all more straightforward, all well crafted songs, each with a different sound (I hear Lightening Seeds, The Jam and The Buzzcocks respectively), each evoking their own images

People have said they can hear Arcade Fire in this album, and there is good reason for this - the band worked with Howard Bilerman, who produced for Arcade Fire. And yet, this is a sound that the band had nurtured in earlier albums, before Arcade Fire's success, and also the track that I think sounds the most like Arcade Fire (the superb single 'Waving Flags') is one of the 3 tracks on the album that was not recorded with Bilerman.

'Waving Flags', is ideal single material. It's anthemic, with its soaring guitars and choral style backing vocals. It's an anti anti-immigration song, 'Oh welcome in, cross the Carpathians'.

The album closes with 'We Close Our Eyes', a kind of reprise of the opening track 'All in It' which is in itself a sort of rallying call to arms.

British Sea Power have never made it big and as I watched them play live, spellbound, in the Komedia in Brighton, all the years of gig going, album buying, commuting, child-caring and everything else just ebbing away, I simply couldn't understand why they are not massive.

The overall sound of the album is big, anthemic, lyrical. It is wind-swept and weather beaten, much like the British countryside, it's a call to arms and a protest song. The sleeve notes give some insight into their thinking (I believe the subject is the title of the album), here's an extract:

~~~~~
Ah, those blue remembered hills. Oh the blues of all creation. There is Iggy and there are the igneous rock formations of Hellvellyn, Bowfell and Dollywagon Pike. There is Black Francis and there is Black Sail Pass, Black Beck Tarn and Black Cuillin - the latter a dark beer, brewed on Skye....
~~~~~

To British Sea Power, rock music is as much about the influence of the rugged, awesome, permanent British landscape as it is about the influences of the great musicians that came before them. These influences ring out in what is an astonishing album.

Do You Like Rock Music? When it sounds like this, I love it.

Summary: Worth a listen