British Sea Power released their third album last week: Do You Like Rock Music? Here’s our new writer Paul Hodges opinion on that, the evil that is Noel Edmunds and a curious Mr. Blobby fact.

The untimely death of Jeremy Beadle reopened a void in my life; I haven’t felt as empty since the axing of Noel’s House Party in the 1990s (see footnote 1). Thankfully, when the Beadle news broke I had just downloaded the new British Sea Power (BSP) album ‘Do you like Rock Music?”.

I’m no stranger to BSP, although it has been a rock-strewn relationship. I fell head-over-heels for their debut Album ‘The Decline of British Sea Power’; its eccentric blend of ‘indie-punk’ infused with intelligence, wit and history spoke to me and became my soundtrack to 2003. Like all the best things it had balls and tits. I made a pilgrimage to Amsterdam to see them play the Cathedral venue ‘Paradiso’ and they were amazing. I had to see them live several times afterward.

I think ‘Fear of Drowning’ will always be one of my favourite songs. It elicits a day-dream of walking happily into the sea waving until disappearing completely; and is wholly responsible for the infamous paddling pool massacre at Billing Aquadrome (Northampton’s premier water-based holiday park).

(Fear of drowning live)

Their second album “Open Season” was - for all the reasons I just mentioned - a massive disappointment in comparison. It’s not a bad album, but to me sounded like a bid for mainstream acceptability, no bad thing unless it means sacrificing the sound that drew people to you in the first place. So it was, still reeling in Beadle’s death wake and with some trepidation I started listening to their third album.

Let’s have a track-by-track breakdown with animal references:

“All In It” - BSP are coming over a hill, the morning sun bouncing off of their helmets. They want you to join their festival as a dancing shrew and Noble’s mum (Guitar) has knitted the costume from hard straw. Yan’s (lead) peaty tones install calm in the listener with a pleasant undercurrent of mania as he beckons you with an erect finger.

“Lights Out for Darker Skies” – epic start, rockabilly middle, and the lyric “Like moths that get confused… By all the man-made moons…” What, I ask you Bono, can you write in reply? (see footnote 2). It’s a fantastic song and takes the willing listener over the musical Alps like a funk Sheppard.

“No Lucifer” - I think - from my loose knowledge of the bible - that this is about Nazis. I picture two small children taking to the hills with a toy bow and quiver of pencils as the SS Panzers rumble into town. They dig a hole, wrap ferns around them and lay together shivering. As their tiny hearts slow they share a conjoined dream of selling their souls to the devil in return for him damming the fascist tide. It might also be about bees.

(No Lucifer video)

“Waving Flags” – outside this appears like a racist terrace chant, inside it welcomes the unification of the EU. Think Nick Griffin’s saggy face occupied by the thoughts of Ronnie Corbet. It is a rousing song by any measure and I can foresee the biggest mass sing-alongs since the blitz occurring in sodden fields come festival season.

(Waving Flags video)

“Canvey Island” – Bird Flu, the biggest disappointment since Golden Wonder ® removed the excess salt from their Pot Noodle range. I built a bunker from Stickle Bricks and filled it with sugar for what?! Damn illustrious song though.

“Down on the Ground” – Happier than Jade Goody being tickled with a naan bread by Frank Bruno. Hamilton (Bass) sounds so effeminate yet so twisted when he sings. Makes my musical-clit engorge.

“A Trip Out” – Again Hamilton is urging the listener to join him on a trip, whether the trip is a metaphor for LSD or indeed a journey down the M4 in a Mega Bus is immaterial, it’s an OK track but has the ‘F’ and the ‘I’ of ‘filler lit-up.

“The Great Skua” - Instrumental. They are no ‘Mogwai’ or ‘Explosion in the Sky’ but the are ‘BSP’, and as such they are capable of playing and not singing and sounding similar to BSP… good, and good for you.

“Atom” – first single, rocks like the bi-annual pebble flinging contest held atop Ben Nevis. Also sounds like Ash being kicked by gypsies in a lay-by until sorry.

“No Need to Cry” – Yan is telling me everything is going to be all right. Aside from indiscriminate bone cancers I concur.

“Open the Door” - get on the floor, everybody do the dinosaur, that was a TUNE. This is too.

“We Close Our Eyes” several minutes of silence, then the faint clanking of chains, then the long fart of a broken church organ, not unlike Hitler and Eva Braun’s wedding reception I would imagine.

I saw BSP at Digital (formerly Zap) in January 2008. When they combine these songs with the previous two albums you can hear a band who are capable of - and doing - remarkable things. Personally the debut still has the most powerful tracks. That thought is rendered irrelevant during the final few minutes as the only thought in my mind was “please don’t go, babe, I love you so, and I want you to know, that I’m, gonna miss your love, the minute, you walk out the door”… but in a very very good way.

Footnotes

*1 I was captured by the ‘Noel Edmond’s Joy Team’ aged eight and forced to operate the head mechanism of the Mr. Blobby suit with a Germanic boy named Karl. I was targeted principally for my childhood obesity and inability to escape traps. Karl and I would toil for hours inside the padded walls of the Blobby machine and even had a brief period of anonymous stardom with our eponymously titled 1993 Christmas number one. Things began to deteriorate when Karl began using meth-amphetamine and overacting, I remember a guest performance on “Beadle’s About” where he upstaged the great man himself, causing us all to bounce into the horrified audience. Ironically it was this unintentional public unmasking that finally granted our freedom. We parted ways after that, last I heard Karl was a successful rapist and living in Cheam.

*2 Bono visited me in a dream. I think News 24 must have been on and the news he’d “gone 3D” had filtered into my subconscious. The outcome was pleasant in the extreme: not only did I visit violent anal sex upon his holy hole; I then chased him though the ‘Queensgate Shopping Centre’ in Peterborough shouting: “you can’t hide in the third dimension Bono”. He was set then set upon by a mass of children wielding plastic axes.

Buy this and other B.S.P. albums

Click on the album covers or text links to purchase from Amazon!

Do You Like Rock Music? is the album reviewed above.

The Decline of British Sea Power is their debut, and the greatest of all their, and many other, albums.

Open Season is the second album, and still a goodun.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Albums. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.