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April 19, 2005

british sea power :: open season

(buy)

When I last left British Sea Power, it was the end of their set at Glastonbury 2004. I had just witnessed this scene, as described in the Guardian's review of Open Season:

Their appearance . . . ended with one of their number plunging headfirst from the stage, another pelting the audience with tree branches then recklessly swinging a large plastic bird at their heads, and the remaining members clambering up on each other's shoulders, picking their way through the debris, pursued by a man who had taken to the stage clad in a giant bear costume. It should be noted that this was among British Sea Power's more restrained shows.

The music was exhilarating, and their sense of humor contrasted in a perfectly absurd way with songs of fairly concentrated, serious power.

A year before, they had released their debut album, cheekily titled The Decline of British Sea Power. It was sequenced for the patient - you had to wade through a thicket of raucous, virulent, somewhat oblique art-punk to get to some more serene gems of Bunnymen brood-pop. The live show made sense of album's curiosity, but I could never fully warm to it.

With Open Season, BSP have gone all pop - and, as a result, this might have been a minor classic of the mid-80s. Its only serious flaw is that it sometimes sounds more like an artifact than art. But listen up: this is proper 80s music. It's not the paint-by-numbers stuff from the "alternative" endcap at your local Sam Goody. It's vintage NME.

What makes BSP worth listening to is their strange, stiff-upper-lip naturalistic poetic take on the world. "Oh Larsen B" is about an ice shelf which broke off of Antarctica. The inner world is covered with lyrics like Aorta, liver, ventricles / And other winter vehicles. And, my lyrical favorite, the song that spends much of its time repeating Drape yourself in greenery / Become part of the scenery.

In my review of the Decemberists a week or so ago, I referred to a critic's quote about Morrissey's precociousness with words; it turns out that I had read it in the Guardian's review linked above (and again here). It's an excellent piece of music writing. Other negative reviews have slagged the disc for being one-speed derivative blandness.

But this record puts a smile on my face. Knowing the band's absurdist approach from the live show makes all the difference in appreciating the songs' erudition as sort of a grand joke on British formalism. It's nothing more than a thoroughly enjoyable, solid pop record, but sometimes that's what you need.

Please Stand Up (mp3)
It Ended On An Oily Stage (wma) (from the BSP Web site)
North Hanging Rock (wma) (from the BSP Web site)
Oh Larsen B (wma) (from the BSP Web site)
It Ended on an Oily Stage (high quality wmv video) (from the BSP Web site)

Posted by borrowed_tunes at April 19, 2005 08:20 PM

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