This is a bright but haunted age
So I've been going through some good but slightly underwhelming releases from bands who have released some of my favorite records of the decade. I've covered the #1's from 07 and 06, but since we're still waiting on Sufjan to bring us a new state, I can't cover the #1 from 2005. But I can do almost the next best thing and talk about the new record from British Sea Power whose Open Season was my #5 record of that year.
The provocatively named Do You Like Rock Music? is certainly not shy as the title should make apparent. Unfortunately, while the album does feature a number of components that live up perfectly to the promise of the title, including some blistering guitars and sterling drumwork, it also suffers from two cardinal sins. And paradoxically, they run in almost completely opposite currents. The first is too much attachment to a style of stadium-rock that you'd expect from some of the lesser numbers at a u2 show. The second is an overindulgence in art-rock pastiche - effects for the sake of effects, which seriously distract from the music.
It's especially a drag because there's nothing inherently problematic about the underlying impulses with either. In fact, their most successful songs are perfect marriages of the two. The trouble is on the weaker tracks where one takes over completely. The result is an album of three distinct parts.
First, the bookends: tracks that are all texture and no substance, full of crackling energy and windswept plains but completely lacking in melody or hooks. "All In It" kicks things off reasonably well: establishing the mood and scope of the record. But when it returns in a reworked form for "We Close Our Eyes" at the end, things go more than a bit astray. Where the opener was a short two minutes, the reprise takes all of eight minutes to drag itself to a conclusion. And while I appreciate the effort to draw connections through the record, the reprise is just too disconnected and pretentious to work for me. I can't help but think it might have been better and more cohesive as a 10-song rock album.
Second, there's the squishy middle, most notably "No Lucifer," "Down on the Ground" and "A Trip Out" which try hard to inspire fist-pumps, but end up feeling flat. They're going for an all-out cataclysm but all I'm seeing are fireworks. Nice, but still a letdown. I also relegate the duller-than-dull "No Need to Cry" and the pleasant but not-quite-filling dreaminess of "Open the Door" to this group. The defining characteristic here is a failure of ambition, of dulled edges.
However, there's also a third category, where the problems of the first two encounter each other, and like matter and anti-matter colliding, unleash an explosion that dwarfs anything felt elsewhere. The pinnacle example is "Lights Out For Darker Skies" which is easily their best song to date. It's epic, explosive, beautiful, and clear demonstration British Sea Power are at their best when they drop some of the reverb and let the notes shine through with piercing clarity. The guitar ns this song is so bursting with life you almost expect it to leap out of the speakers and, as the song says "dance like sparks in a muzzle" right in front of your eyes.
Other standouts include "Waving Flags" and "Canvey Island," each of which would have sounded very at home on their last album. The former is an almost perfect offspring of post-punk timbre with a New Wave melody - with a hook that knocks you over and layers upon layers of textured sound. The latter is far smoother until the final minute when the reverb hits like a storm, washing away everything in its path - a suiting representation of the flood the song is about.
And then there's the instrumental "The Great Skua" - the calm after the storm, when the clouds break and you remember to breathe.
But the final stunner is "Atom." If there is one song that characterizes this record, in all its parts, and which invites an emphatic yes! to the album's title, it is this one. The spacious atmospherics remain, but are captured, restrained, left to build up force until they breach the walls and burst like a tornado past your eardrums. It sidles up quietly, with a minute-long preface that lulls you gently until you're knocked to the ground by a gale-force wind.
Lights Out For Darker Skies - British Sea Power
Atom - British Sea Power
