British Sea Power have – thankfully – never fulfilled the threat made by their austere name and minimalist record sleeves. Instead of the conceptual, oceanic sound composed of cutlery scrapes and subsonic booms you might reasonably expect, you always got common-or-garden indie rock, as indistinguishable from its peers as brie from camembert.
Same thing happens here. Those inviting words: ‘sea’, ‘power’ and ‘open’. Acres of blue sky on the sleeve. And yet "Open Season" no more throws aside the shackles of the genre to run naked and hooting through the meadows than come encased in strawberry jelly. Nonetheless, for around 80 per cent of its duration, it's the sort of common-or-garden brie than actually puts some colour in your cheeks.
Borrowing one of fey’s Seven Basic Plots – i.e. boy writes “elegiac stanzas” for an unworthy lass - opening cut "It Ended On An Oily Stage" is a joyful and potty beginning. Sounding just like "Pretty In Pink"-era Psychedelic Furs it boasts a stomping beat, cascading ringing hook as good as you’ve heard in three years, and urgent, entertaining lyrical chatter that roams from the Eastern Bloc to “a Wiltshire field”. Nicest of all, it has that slightly camp edge a bloke simply must possess if he wants to lift hearts. In short, it sounds like it can actually be bothered.
Next up, "Be Gone"’s gorgeous clangy intro packs a similar satin-gloved punch to "Babies" by Pulp and its go-for-it message (“Don’t be afraid of anyone/Like seasons, just move on”) bristles with daring, dashing lyrics like “iridescent”, “guillotine” and “heart arrhythmia”. Popped straight from the same pod, "Please Stand Up" is all gleaming guitars, motorway-storming spirit and we’re-not-just-in-it-for-the-girls urgency, like Springsteen fronting Pulp, or peak-period The Associates. It will certainly woo new fans this summer if frontman Yan doesn’t succumb fatally to the heavy head cold that seems constantly to muffle his very English Lloyd Cole/Edwyn Collins tones.
Febrile, idiosyncratic, epic yet fun: "Open Season" may not raise eyebrows but it has – thank God - raised the hitherto pitifully low bar for British guitar rock.
