British
Sea Power Write Elegiac Stanzas For You (continued):
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Next comes "North Hanging Rock,"
which starts off as the record's quietest moment
before gradually building to a crescendo. As
for the sounds of rocks crunching under foot
and the birds singing in the background at the
start of the song, those are real. Yan did the
vocal tracks outside in the courtyard of the
studio in Wales where Open Season was recorded,
and the sound of crunching rocks is his footsteps
as he walks to the microphone. Incidentally,
a number of drum tracks were also recorded outside
with a group of stabled horses as an audience.
"To Go To Sleep" and "Victorian
Ice" finish out the middle five. Both are
written in major keys which makes them brighter
affairs with "To Go To Sleep" building
up into quite a rocking song before it cuts
off, and "Victorian Ice" jauntily
pushed along by another catchy guitar riff.
 The
last three songs of the record cap it off in
grand style. "Oh Larsen B" finds Yan
singing an ode to the Larsen B Antarctic ice
shelf: "You had twelve thousand years/And
now it's all over/Five hundred billion tonnes
of the purest pack ice and snow/Oh Larsen B,
oh won't you fall on me?/Oh Larsen B, desalinate
the barren sea." The last two minutes of
the song build beautifully into a dynamic ending,
starting from a bass and drum breakdown that
slowly gathers steam as Noble drops lovely single
note harmonics on top. "The Land Beyond"
features Hamilton singing a tale that could
be about death or just a simple venture into
unknown and uncharted territory.
The closer, "True Adventures" is
Open Season's epic at just under eight minutes.
It is less sweeping and subsequently less messy
that "Lately," Decline's magnum opus,
but it is still the record's grandest moment.
According to Noble, the song came about after
a heavy storm had struck the barn where they
were writing, and Wood, the band's drummer,
set out to recreate the sound of the storm on
his drum kit. Sure enough, the song opens with
a rumble of thunder before the crash of first
the drums and then other instruments. Then the
music settles into a lovely hushed melody and
gentle lyrics that suit Hamilton's fragile,
high-pitched voice perfectly before collapsing
into more instrumental chaos and then back to
the melody again in a pattern reminiscent of
the Byrds "Eight Miles High." The
song ends Open Season in a satisfied mood evocative
of an emerging sunset after a powerful storm.
If The Decline of British Sea Power was a sweeping
gale of record with wild swings in energy and
emotion, Open Season is more grounded and earthy,
which is a product of not only the environs
where it was created but also in the band's
refusal to do anything but follow its own path.
"We wear our hearts on our sleeves,"
says Noble matter-of-factly, which leads you
believe that the band's forays into literary
themes and attempts to recreate the sounds of
nature in music are not acts of pretense but
genuinely sincere expressions of their artistic
perspective. But fans who might mourn the loss
of the band's harder-edged material need not
worry. Noble says, "We wrote some spiky
songs as well, but they didn't fit the mood
of the record, so we may put them out on an
EP or even save them for the next record."
When viewed in terms of the newest wave of
the British Invasion that includes the post-punk,
dance-club ready bands like Franz Ferdinand,
The Futureheads, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs,
and others, British Sea Power doesn't really
fit in. But that is just fine with the band
whose rural roots (only Noble is from a major
city, Leeds; Wood, Yan, and Hamilton are from
rural Cumbria in the northwest of England near
the Lake District, while keyboardist/percussionist
Eamon is from Gloucestershire in the west) are
reflected in both their music and desire to
avoid the often London-centric attitudes of
the British music press. "We never wanted
to move to London. London bands have a reputation
for being cool, but we're quite awkward and
don't like to fit in with everyone else,"
explains Noble.
Their recent American tour included a stop
at the Coachella Festival in California, where
the band played to a significantly larger crowd
than at their club shows, but reports from both
Coachella and various smaller venues were unanimous
in their effusive praise for the band's live
show both in terms of energy and musicianship.
Indeed a number of people who saw them in Austin
and had been underwhelmed by Open Season came
away with a different view of the band.
Despite their surging popularity in the UK,
British Sea Power still prefers to play in smaller
out-of-the-way locations and non-rock events.
Noble says that the band likes it that way,
"In towns with less of a musical heritage,
the crowds tend to react differently. Crowds
in places with more of a heritage tend to be
more critical, while in places where not a lot
of bands play, they are just glad to see a band
and become more enthusiastic." In addition
to appearances later this summer at the massive
Glastonbury, Reading, and Leeds festivals, their
first public appearance upon their return from
their US tour was at the Chelsea Flower Show,
one of the biggest gardening festivals in the
world. For so many bands, this would seem to
be incongruous, but with British Sea Power,
it seems to work.
After two records that have set quite a standard,
British Sea Power's next test will be to find
new musical horizons, but there doesn't seem
to be much of a chance of the band doing anything
but following its singular muse. Perhaps in
the meantime we'll get to see if newer bands
try to clone what BSP is doing, and stages around
the world will become covered in tree branches,
while earnest young men write songs with dictionaries
and encyclopedias at their sides. Sounds better
than blow-dried boy bands, doesn't it?
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