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BSP DYRM

British Sea Power: Do You Like Rock Music?

36 votes
?
by Samuel Strang
  • Type: Album
  • Release date: 14/01/2008
  • Label: Rough Trade

Having beckoned all in with a question as banal as it is brilliant, the muscular tide of ‘All In It’ ushers us back into the skewed world British Sea Power inhabit, and ‘No Lucifer’ rears up, all brawn and gusto. Cries to “give me the dummy, tit” are surrounded by familiar chants of “easy!”, a tribute to years of Shirley Crabtree Jr’s flailing fists and the grappling wrestling prowess of family favourite Big Daddy and his belly-gutted conquests.

But, away from the belligerent knuckles that The Decline of British Sea Power waved around so haphazardly, with bloodied lip and winded gut Do You Like Rock Music?’s heavy hands are a guileful flurry of throws rather than one solid blow, recklessly flitting between the delicate, retiring grace of Open Season and their rabid 2003 debut.

Bookending the record, ‘All In It’ and its curtain-closing reprise ‘We Close Our Eyes’ are largely redundant other than to provide amiable welcoming and parting shakes. Instead, as good manners fade, it's the calamitous Surfer Rosa hook to ‘Lights Out For Darker Skies’ that arrests attentions, darting infectiously as gusts of chamber noise break in and comfortably nestle alongside Yan’s trademark streak of Betjeman romanticism.

With Efrim Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire) and Graham Sutton (Bark Psychosis) all contributing at various legs of production - Czech plains, Canadian bunkers and the coastal climbs of pigeon shit-retreat Fort Tregantle all scaled - the modest charms of BSP initially seem engulfed by an opportunistic shift towards a post-rock pretence, as if making hollow calls to greying rock enthusiasts shifting ‘round Waitrose.

But this is their call to arms. Reverb drenches the awkward silences that once sat so starkly atop the anthemic hollering and as symphonies ring out for Slavic friends on ‘Waving Flags’ - a national anthem for those crossing eastern peninsulas for minimum wage - it’s clear the Cumbrian eccentrics have decided to open their arms to a wider audience, whether Shiraz-stained sophisticates or bopping cretins. The instrumental ode to gannet-pilfing Nordic seabird ‘The Great Skua’ most closely mirrors Open Season’s orchestral aspirations in its focus upon acute intricacies, but elsewhere strings are instead welded onto giant riffs to form crushing blows.

Rather than Yan’s rousing, Thin White Duke delivery, it is usual side-dish Hamilton’s modest rasp that contributes the defining leads, with his delirious delivery an uncomfortable brand of whimsy, beguiling as he pines on the withdrawn ‘No Need To Cry’, lecherously cooing “I don’t mind if you’re queer”.

That same uncomfortable bawl seeps in on the reckless disregard of ‘Down On The Ground’, a track that reared its snout from the trough on the recent Krankenhaus? EP alongside ‘Atom’, providing something between Clap Your Hands’ hurdy-gurdy headfuck and the Red Army Choir’s stoic roar. As gargled shouts and air raid sirens call out with Niels Bohr’s quantum conundrum causing concerns, it provides a track chaotic amidst the calm as ‘Open The Door’ tones down proceedings and Sea Power pick out their Sunday best to close.

Wired with a sense of opportunity, these little Caesars continue to play mother’s favourite rather than the ostracised gurning recluses they initially cast themselves as. Yet the trademark peculiarities remain. As with previous odes to arctic glaciers and ebbing tides, few others could bemoan with such nonsensical brilliance the loss of lives and football club records when estuary isle ‘Canvey Island’ was drowned out in 1953.

For all the rhetoric surrounding these pomped-up epic pursuits, away from Arcade Fire’s entrenched inwardness, there's an underlying sense of egalitarian spirit and warped optimism to British Sea Power’s raucous gambol, inviting you in on the gently demented proceedings rather than leaving you a cold onlooker. Do you like rock music? That doesn’t matter. Little Richard or Richard Littlejohn? It’s all just a front, all just an invite into Sea Power’s crowded nest.

  • British Sea Power 9 / 10

thesaurus.reference.com?

This is indeed a wonderful album...


i second


Tis a good album

better than Open Season, but not in the same league as The Decline Of... - but then, what is?


This album is epicly monsterous

and sounds more like what Neon Bible should of sounded like then what Neon Bible sounded like.


Unholy

isn't the cover to this CD the exact same as the cover to Unholy by Martin Grech?


or

TAKE THAT: GREATEST HITS


Yes

Tip top album.

First listens warranted a 10 and a "defining album" tag, alas further lisetns slightly take the sheen off. The first half is monstrous though (and the organ in 'All In It' is spine-tingling).


..

this is my most favourite record in a LONG time. adore.


yes indeed

i think there is a little lull when you get over the initial epic-ness, but then it gets better and better. the guitar solo type thing in 'open the door' is probably my favourite bit. it's just great generally.


I love the album

but hate the album title sufficiently to drop Samuel's estimation a tick.


I enjoyed it too

a little over-stuffed towards the end though. Still, off to buy this after work.


such

a shit album title. Still, as it's BSP I will give it a go.

Interesting review too.


Its a grower

Really wasn't sure about "Atom" but the recent single and this, especially "No Lucifer" restored my faith in this wonderful band.


This album is like

a long Sunday car journey to your gran's......tedious and ever so slighty nauseating. Good for Top Gear compilations. If ever a bad looked so good on paper and disappointed so much in reality. Check out the Bunnymen in their heyday for this kind of music done a thousand times better. BSP are no better than the Bunnymen are today.


I agree

with the title slating, what were they thinking?

This review was really hard work to read.


Ditto binary

the review is far better than the actual album.


Great album...

...horrendously overwritten review.


snow patrol crossed with....

....icicle works. another bland stadium filler. bigger is not necessarily better.....but sells more records


just words!

Canna make head nor tail of this review, but the albums a cracker that's for sure!


Guardian review

Have got it and looking forward to listening.

Have been slightly put off balance though by the Kitty Empire Guardian review. After hailing their charming eccentricity, she describes the band thus:

"They promise so very much. And yet, time and again, they turn out to be a ploddingly mediocre indie rock band...."

This has unsettled me, because that's always my suspicion too... I have listened to Open Season countless times and I still put it on, but I think what's probably drawn me in is the brilliant graphics, the student sensibility, the young fogey eccentricity and the fact that they're from my glorious home town. None of the songs really do it for me - beyond 'It Ended on an Oily Stage' and maybe 'Victorian Ice'. So when I read that it did kind of strike a chord.

Hoping to be finally convinced, mind.


That Observer review

Is utter gash, I almost choked on my Sunday lunch reading some of her ridiculous, off-the-mark assertions.

That sentence about "puckering up to Flaming Lips" makes me want to vomit in my mouth.


Kitty Empire

always writes utter gash.


Quite like this album...

...but this review is pretentious twaddle!!

I think the production sounds like a slightly lo-fi Doves.

Hopefully it's a grower!!


if you weren't convinced

this record's not going to change yr mind - I kept looking forward to discovering BSP's sheer brilliance, song after song,album after album, but every time they let me down with another slab of overproduced, overwritten 4-chord mediocrity.

I think most people are drawn to this band because of the odd (yet fascinating) lyrics, their perennial underachievers image and elaborate stage show. It's the indie band it's cool to like....pity their music is so lame.


"I just don't get it"

Awesome album, I can't stop listening to it. I don't get the negative comments at all; It's like trying to find fault. 4-chord mediocrity? Songs like 'Light out.." and "Canvey Island" for starters, are the special ones where the song changes in tempo, and takes on a new direction in music. Not standard fare at all, which is why I love them. The music is epic and different.