Take British Sea Power’s second album, 2005’s ‘Open Season’, in isolation and it remains a sure-footed accomplishment from a never less than able-bodied group ruling indie’s fringes with an immaculate sense of creativity. With its clean lines, careful delivery, crisp licks pealing from Noble’s guitar like sheerings from an ironmonger’s lathe and unusual yet uncomplicated themes spoken with breathless wonder by Yan it was an easy record to get caught in a gentle spin with; palatable, dreamy, conscientious, waxed and technically error free.
And yet, as a background concern, they had seemingly dropped as excess weight the cargo that made them so matchless in the first place – namely that sense of unbridled drama, the harnessing of an almost respectful, educated strain of anarchy, if such a thing is possible. And the mischief – they’d created music early on embedded with wide childlike-eyes, bulging maddeningly, either with forewarning that you were about to be bowled over by a force-10 torrent of affection, or have your car keys snatched. ‘Open Season’, then, wielded maturity like a double-edged sword.
‘Do You Like Rock Music?’ though turns out to be the spark-heavy melding-point of these two variants of personality and is subsequently, quite possibly, their zenith. While the yelping English-meadow Pixies of ‘Apologies To Insect Life’ and the like will forever remain in the past as evidence of their embryo forming, this third album – save for a couple of respites en route – spurs forth precipitously, untamed abandon and a full momentum apparent and unparalleled elsewhere in their canon. Such is the gathering force with which they and the contents of this album drive forward, like the displacement of a building and all its belongings by a cyclone’s flippant wrath, it feels like they’re only competing with themselves for a position atop the pile when the poetic carnage settles. And that’s the only adversary worth competing with when you aim for greatness.
Really, never before have they sounded nearly so lavish as they do now – alternating between full-bodied Flaming Lips majesty (indeed, chest-beating fanfare ‘Waving Flags’ sounds like a lost moment from ‘The Soft Bulletin’ that drifted just too high and ‘All In It’ a good companion to ‘Do You Realize?’), misty-eyed Echo & The Bunnymen melodies and the proud, driving force of first-half Manic Street Preachers. Guitars erupt regularly like chandeliers smashing cinematically on a ballroom floor, feedback licking up against the walls trying to escape its confines – yet for all of that it remains a humbling listen, never getting too big for its size 10s.
Never have they sounded so very together either – specifically the dizzyingly ecstatic “Get it! GET IT!” vocal relay in ‘Atom’, “EASY!” cavalry chant in ‘No Lucifer’ and the choral hypnosis of ‘All In It’ present a band entwined with renewed vigour and focus to the same cause. And as a result of all of this, perhaps, never have they sounded so spectacular at a song’s close – ‘Lights Out For Darker Skies’, ‘Down On The Ground’ and especially the mountainously epic ‘Canvey Island’ sound like a wick lit under a block of flats as they hurriedly ratchet every last ounce of climax in before the dust settles. Drama duly restored. Put simply, they have never sounded so good and perhaps, given it is such triumph from beginning to end, they never will again.