Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
British Sea Power
Open Season
(Rough Trade, 2005)
Last week: Mercury also-rans. This week and always: firm favourites in MOJO hearts.
Were British Sea Power robbed in last week’s Mercury Prize steeplechase? Perhaps; but the Mercury is a fickle mistress, and the band’s stirring performance of Waving Flags, complete with ululating Bulgarian choir, must have shifted a few copies of latest BSP LP, Do You Like Rock Music?, and furnishes another opportunity for MOJO to expand tediously on what it is we so like about them – and specifically, their ravishing second album.
The Kendal/Brighton conglom’s first long-player, 2003’s The Decline Of British Sea Power, catered for rare sensibilities. Entranced by nature and mired in history, the intense four-piece sang of birdlife, bravery and Brilliantine, while flinging together aspects of Orange Juice, Joy Division and the Pixies to construct raw, dramatic rock for bookish romantics. It seemed a little arch in places but - like a set of Wills cigarette cards found in a seaside junk shop - it bore an air of melancholy and old-fashioned character.
Open Season was their outreach album, immediately less chaotic and parochial, more serene and accessible, but no less magical than its predecessor. Glacial guitars ping out, describing curt, singalong melodies. Singer Yan (aka Scott Wilkinson), once jarring and querulous, sounds more persuasive. Exemplified by Spectorish single It Ended On An Oily Stage, these are pop songs that make you feel somehow sad, yet promise to sound thrilling on the radio.
They're still young to be making statements like "You better start growing up before you get old", as they do in Victorian Ice (an elegantly consumptive song with its roots in Postcard 45s) but this is part of the appeal: there are values driving British Sea Power that do not drive, say, Kasabian. Open Season's best tune, the luminous Oh Larsen B, is a love song to 3250 square kilometres of Antarctic pack ice that slipped into the ocean in 2002, a gargantuan victim of global climate change. The track's exquisite coda - a motorik meld of Neu! and Eno with echoes of overlooked '90s dreampoppers The Kitchens Of Distinction - sends it off with an elegiac swoon. It's noble music with the power of New Order's Regret or A Design For Life by the Manic Street Preachers.
At a time when '80s post-punk and atmos-rock templates are being pillaged for riffs and production tics, this remains unique music, because British Sea Power's vision is unique. Through their eyes, everything is ending, fading or going away. What's left are shadows and fossils, "carbonate and myth". Items of worth are proving harder and harder to find. Anyone who feels the same should rush to their banner - they'll feel curiously heartened.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 16/09/2008
Further Listening
British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music? (Rough Trade, 2008)
Kitchens Of Distinction – Strange Free World (One Little Indian, 1991)
Young Knives – Superabundance (Transgressive, 2008)
Previous Disc of the day
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Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
6:00 AM GMT 18/03/2010
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Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River
Essence De Choogle from John Fogerty and crew. Badass!
9:54 AM GMT 17/03/2010
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The The - Soul Mining
Matt Johnson's self-excoriating - but tunepacked! -classic.
6:00 AM GMT 16/03/2010
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Various Artists - Axe Attack Vol II
Metal Britannica inspires MOJO metal amnesty. Studded leather wristbands aloft!
2:32 AM GMT 12/03/2010
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The Pop Group - Y
For connoisseurs of pop-as-rupture-in-the-space/time-continuum
6:00 AM GMT 11/03/2010
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Comments
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lovely article.
they are a band who have grown, album by album and for this they should be cherished.
Posted by RG at 12:57 PM GMT 18/09/2008 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
lovely article.
they are a band who have grown, album by album and for this they should be cherished.
Posted by RG at 12:58 PM GMT 18/09/2008 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
lovely article.
they are a band who have grown, album by album and for this they should be cherished.
Posted by RG at 12:58 PM GMT 18/09/2008 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Comment on this post