British Sea Power

except british sea power. who, despite the fact that they force 6 year olds to eat glass, are all lovely himbos with great songs. i especially like the last one they do, the best 20 minutes i ever spent.

British Sea Power are not worth following. BSP your 15 seconds of fame are up.

I've been played their single on repeated occasions by 3 different people. I'll be darned if I can remember a note of what they actually sounded like. This does not bode well.

real i am yoda. and friends many i have too are.

do what you like and like what you do?

you won't stop me going to see them on thursday.

I'm not Roy - he doesn't like me.

having said that there are a couple of songs on the new album that could break them through.

New album out in about 10 days.

It's really good.

I can't wait!!

“The aim of this record is to have Poles dancing with Slovaks, Romanians dancing with the Welsh, Arsene Wenger dancing with Alex Ferguson and everyone singing this song. We’re better together than we are apart – all together and nice and drunk. The East is maybe the future of all of us lot in the West, so long live the mighty power-chords of trans-national rock music.”

There is not nearly enough pretentious wankery in music these days. I love it.

But it has football references - wahey!

New album: great songs, hampered by poor use of "bookending tracks" concept.

I'm not dancing with no Slovak.

Not even if they Pole dance?

Kind of boring on the first two listens, I really liked the pristine melodic sound they went for with the last record but this one seems to have too much bluster and too little that's actually memorable.

Enjoying this a lot off a distracted listen in the office.

I dunno, I kind of agree with the Observer review from yesterday. All their reviews start off going 'Plants onstage! Songs about glaciers! They're so interesting!' but the music is so generic and uninspried.

Agreed. They have always promised more than they can deliver.

I asked Yan to explain his "The East is maybe the future of all of us lot in the West" quote (for it was he who said it), and this was his reply:

"Oh…! [guilty laughter] What would I mean… mm-hmm… I think it’s possibly that we’ve had quite a long run of new ideas and changing things dramatically. Maybe it’s time to swap over, and take ideas from the other end of the spectrum. Eastern Europe is a place that’s changing a lot, and modernising. Maybe they’ll do it in a slightly better way, if we pay attention. And then there’s the East of China or whatever, which is obviously economically the future of the world. Always East, yeah…"

Have I mentioned that I used to know one of them when I/he lived in Reading? Look at me, I'm a regular Suzy!

Loved the early singles and the first album, got a bit bored with them at Truck in 2003 when their set went on a bit too long and everything seemed a bit too rehearsed. Listened to the second album once and didn't like it generic and uninspired otm. I want to hear the new one, but every review is still all Arcade Fire and Editors-referencing. Is it? I saw Open Season in Fopp for £3 recently and I stil couldn't be bothered with it. Maybe they're a band I should just abandon to 18months of my life that were pretty good but I'm not going back there.

My initial reaction to reading that (your comment; not seen Observer review) was an indignant "but they're NOT generic and uninspired!", but given five seconds of through I think, perhaps, that they are pretty generic, and that, actually, that's kind of what I like about them - they are an inky indie band with a few little character quirks (that could be seen as conceits) and nice little tunes about odd little things. The thing is that I think what they do, they do with real care and attention, and that's what appeals to me; sure, the 'bookend tracks' thing might be a bit gauche in 2007, but I also think it shows that they care about the idea of making 'an album' that you listen to in order, and stuff. I think sonically they're (while far from perfect) very good too, and a serious cut above most semi-mainstream 'indie' (where 00s indie is just 'guitar rock', obv.). I've only listened to this on my work comp so far, but looking at the recording and production credits I'm confident that it'll open up really nicely on the big rig or headphones at home, too.

But the key thing for me about them, and this might sound either mental or genius, is the tunes; without sounding like Geir, I think they've got amazing melodies - not in the way I think Beatles melodies are amazing, or Embrace melodies (love or hate them, I think Danny's an awesome melodicist even if he can't sing), but there's something really understated about a lot of their tunes, especially on the second album, that I adore. A Wooden Horse and The Lonely off the first album, too. Not just the melodies, but... I really like the sense of momentum and... narrative, almost, that their tunes have at their best. Just a really simple, little, nothingness song like Like A Honeycomb off the last album, I just find really heartwarming and beautiful. I listened to the last album a lot while walking coastal paths in Devon, and it was amazing.

Also, if they're generic, who else is in their genre? What genre are they generic of? Because there aren't many bands that I know of who are doing something all that similar; you can't lump them in with Kaiser Chiefs or The Killers or Hard-Fi, and they're nothing like Guillemots or Patrick Wolf either. Yeah, they're 'just' an indie band, but who else is, these days? They're not a date-rape stadium rock band in disguise, they're not AOR piano ballads with delusions...

X-posts there - my response is to MatDC.

I like all their work so far, looking forward to the new one. I agree with Sicky's summary - for me, they represent the best of indie rock.

One of the best things they ever did, though, was a collaboration with The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa on "A Lovely Day Tomorrow"/

i like this album quite a bit

fancy that

Also, if they're generic, who else is in their genre? What genre are they generic of?

It's the Big And Important, Standing On A Cliff Top Looking Windswept And Earnest genre: Bombasto-Indie!

The most striking reference point on DYLRM? is Arcade Fire, which is understandable given that the initial sessions took place over two or three months in Montreal, working with AF drummer Howard Bilerman (and Efrim Menuck from Godspeed You! Black Emperor). But we could also loosely lump them in with Doves, Editors, Electric Soft Parade, Brakes, Bloc Party, the rockier stuff from the last Athlete album, etc...

See I don't get the "big and important" vibe off them AT ALL; maybe it's cos I liked the second album best, and that was "small and insignificant in the face of gazing at the sea from the clifftop" (literally how Im listened to it a lot).

(I actually really like the second album for what its worth, its this one that I found dull)

I didn't get on with this one as well as I'd thought I would when I got home last night, actually - this may just be that I had a fucking mental busy weekend and was too tired to really take it in, however. The second one took ages to grow on me, apart from the two Sutton produced tracks.

I think a lot of the reaction to this record, all the "oh my gosh they're totally gonna get a top ten single off this" hype talk indie blog nonsense, is the fact that it's January and there's fuck-all else to get excited about. The single got to 31.

Whereas I've suddenly started coming round to it! It's taken a good half a dozen plays, though.

disclaimer: i love this band with an undying and unquestionable passion.

interesting that some people would regard them with a "big and important" viewpoint (which i assume is meant negatively). like nick i don't get this at all--in fact it's that they write songs about such inconsequentialities that gives a sense of huge scale; as weird as this sounds i think of the scale of BSPs songs as being a lateral "you can see for miles" landscape than a more upwards, spacelike/cosmic scale you'd more commonly get.

the songs are taking the mundane and making them sound fantastical; i.e. there's no pretension of "big and important"--the songs themselves are bigger than the band.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7209121.stm

http://i30.tinypic.com/2hg48c9.jpg

I was trying to figure out where I'd heard the name Phil Sumner before. Then I was "watching" (i.e. half asleep on the couch) Hetty Wainthropp Investigates on TV over Christmas and it turns out that he plays the cornet on the theme tune. So he should know better than to indulge in tired old stage diving antics!

Open Season is really good, DYLRM stumbles a bit (though it didn't deserve the Pitchfork joke review treatment it got)

DYLRM got a positive pfork review iirc. the bad ones were valhalla and machineries, both by ian cohen so

oh shit. nm. i remember now

"True Adventures" from Open Season is one of my all-time favorite album-closers.

Yeah, 'True Adventures' rules... and I'll bet it sounds better in a live environment. I really need to see this band live.

Onto Do You Like Rock Music? ... it's a bit cleaner and feels more beefed-up/muscular compared to the previous two - I'm loving it, though!

Do You Like Rock Music? had a pretty strong effect on me - in a way the rest of their stuff just hasn't (chunks of Man of Arran aside). I still listen every few months. Need to revisit the earlier albums.

Holy shit, 'We Close Our Eyes' is an incredible closer - these guys really know how to do epics.

Damn, I hadn't seen that Pitchfork review of "Valhalla Dancehall". They miss the point completely, it's exactly their attempt to "marry both their quirkier sensibilities and arena-level hooks" that makes it so compelling and downright fun! The "Zeus" mini-album is arguable even better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDPS3u_DBw4

I really like 'Zeus'. "Cleaning Out The Rooms" might be my favourite BSP song.

Of course that's on the album too. The other 'Zeus' track I love is "Bear".

^ Their two best songs. I'm refusing to buy the new album unless anyone makes the claim that there is a song as good on there.

No one will make that claim.

that's a cruelly high standard. and not really close.

Halfway through Valhalla Dancehall and I now officially love this band - nobody is as surprised about this as much as I am and I'm left wondering why this stuff didn't click with me before. Maybe it was just that I needed to hear the right song at the right time.

I haven't picked up the new album yet, the singles have sounded fine but 'Machineries of Joy' passed me by a little when it came out, I bought it but must have been to busy listening to other things to properly get into it.

Maybe it was just that I needed to hear the right song at the right time.

I could list dozens of bands where that was true for me. I still revisit things to see if the intervening years of listening has changed my perceptions.

Back to BSP: they've got a large cache of non-lp material, much of which is worth hearing. This is my single favorite obscurity, though it's cheating a bit because the vocals are handled by Kateřina Winterová of Ecstasy of Saint Theresa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHgpNZSxwPU

There's an older version of that song with Hamilton on vocals that's just as Lovely.

IIRC it concerns the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c_XaSrLzEM

Was really disappointed by Open Season and Do You Like Rock Music. They were not bad albums at all but the debut was amazing and got me thinking they were going to be one of the great rock bands of their era. I'd love a compilation of the early singles and EPs, surprised it never happened by now.

I've been a little hesitant to check the new stuff. I felt Open Season suffered for not using their better singer enough (I don't know their names) because one is way better than the other.

fwiw the same singer, yan, sings all but 2 songs on decline and all but 3 on open season. i would characterize those first two and the most recent as the most dominated by him.

Is this the most recent thread? Anyway, they have announced they've changed their name - they've dropped the "British" bit.

International Sea Power

https://slinky.to/twofingers

I mean, hey, good enough reasoning for me:

On Monday 9 August 2021, the band announced that they would henceforth be known as Sea Power due to “a rise in a certain kind of nationalism in this world – an isolationist, antagonistic nationalism that (they) don’t want to run any risk of being confused with.”

New single sounds very promising. I mean, yeah, nothing radically new in their sound but it's still a sound I dig.

otm

Excited to see where they go from here.

Anyone particularly feeling the album?

I'll sit down and give it a listen this evening. Press seems positive.

This new one has a couple of highlights, but it feels a bit lackadaisical in general.

Funny, I felt that way about the last couple — they'd have a formidable track or two, and the rest never quite gelled. This latest one felt much more polished and cohesive, even if it's not their most adventurous.

I'm going to agree with Rizzx's assessment - there are a couple of stand out tracks that come early ("Transmitter", "Two Fingers"), a couple of other solid songs and the rest is nice sub-shoegaze that moves too slowly for what I want. A good listen but nothing that's going to make me return. The truth is, I haven't played the last one since it came out, either. I think this is where I get off the bus.

It's been growing on me this album, it's very textural and melodic and with Two Fingers it has a song that could be a peace anthem for these times.

Just like Liberace
I will return to haunt you with
Peculiar piano riffs