Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 14/01/08
Label: Rough Trade

The first time Yahoo! had the privilege of seeing British Sea Power live, in 2003, the scene of David Niven crashing his Wellington Bomber into the sea in Powell and Pressburger's 1946 metaphysical classic "A Matter Of Life And Death" was projected in full onto the back of the stage. Then as an air-raid siren was cranked into life, the band emerged in uniforms of netting and tin helmets. The gig ended chaotically with a man in a bear suit dancing on-stage and people holding taxidermied birds aloft while marching through a rabid crowd all waving tree branches.

We mention this because the band have never quite captured the elegiac and triumphant nature of their gigs on record. First album "The Rise And Fall Of British Sea Power" was a promising start with a series of epic cuts but the follow-up "Open Season" is perhaps correctly considered a relative disappointment. In these fickle days (will The Futureheads, for example, ever recover from being dropped by 679 after a poorly performing second album) BSP are lucky to be with the independent powerhouse Rough Trade, and personal favourites of founder and owner, Geoff Travis.

And this patience looks to have paid off because they've finally turned in a record that could, in an ideal world, propel them into the major league. "Do You Like Rock Music?" sees BSP retain some of their early Joy Division/Psychedelic Furs urgency and propel it forward with a warm and uplifting post rock-sheen and production. Much like the sadly missed Hope Of The States, they muster compelling music that sounds like triumph in the face of adversity, building something beautiful out of the building blocks of sadness and despair.

After the recurring, unifying choral theme of opener "All In It" we have the rock solid future single of "Lights Out For Darker Skies", which amply fills the footsteps of XTC and early Simple Minds. One of the most striking and exciting songs is the bombastic "No Lucifer" a rebuff to Satan delivered in the style of a football terrace chant with music played by early period Ride. Crashing waves of chiming guitar that land somewhere between Doves and My Bloody Valentine break all the way through the anthemic "Waving Flags".

Where "Open Season" reflected the group's bucolic charm with the autumnal, atmospheric sonics to match, "Do You Like Rock Music" is a heavier, bigger aural experience. As crucially, on tracks such as "Canvey Island" and "No Need To Cry", they excel by carving out a specifically British sound that celebrates a tangible Englishness of the past and present as opposed to the seaside postcard daftness of Britpop. Anyone disappointed by Arcade Fire's ultimately hollow and bombastic 'Neon Bible' would be advised to plug into this Power.

    by John Doran