Weekly Release Spotlight: British Sea Power
Posted on 2/10/2008
British Sea Power
Do You Like Rock Music?
[Rough Trade]
Odds are that if you have any kind of reaction to the off-putting titular question posed by the Brighton group's third full-length, whether feeling challenged or condescended, you are not one of those poor souls that believed rock and roll ever was or ever needed to be saved by anyone. Rock music indeed never had nor ever will have any minute possibility of going away, regardless of what music critics told us when The Strokes hit the scene. An artist using their album title to ask us about our take on the genre only inherently strengthens rock's prevalence in our musical culture. The eleven tracks on British Sea Power's latest effort fit oh so classically into that canon that for just a moment you can realize the absurdity of a world where so much of the record industry's output follows a simple formula: strum, cymbal crash, emote, repeat.
Of course, a band who devotes entire songs to Nobel Peace Prize winners ("Atom") and locales plagued by Avian Influenza ("Canvey Island") is probably intelligent enough to be in on the joke. While the contents of their sound may not be earth shattering, as they surely know, it's the assemblage of their parts that makes them worth listening to. British Sea Power don't just strum their guitars; they wail, flail, and crush them. Their cymbals don't just crash; they collide astronomically with a wily and gargantuan passion. And you better believe they don't just emote. No, they construct resounding choral arrangements that convey lyrically dramatic, intimate, and pleading human sentiments to the point of aortic rupture.
From the ascending opening track to the muted eight-minute closer, British Sea Power repeat the ambiguous mantra: "We're all in it now." While the intellectual rockers might be singing about our inescapable eternally devolving society, the listener might construe the statement as a brazen claim to the band's power to reel in and retain your ears' attention for a series of unforgettable anthems. Whether it be "No Lucifer" capturing the nervous essence of a future-weary world or “Trip Out” searching for a moment of freedom during the apocalypse, there is enough tension and power bleeding through every seam of DYLRM? to keep anyone listening straight from beginning to end, regardless of their traditionally calculated musical leanings.
Stream: British Sea Power - Atom
Written by Chris Polley, Radio K volunteer and host of Now Like Photographs.
British Sea Power will be playing at the Triple Rock on March 21, 8:00 pm Doors, 21+