British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music? (Rough Trade)

by Steve Holtje
12 February 2008

The title may be corny, but it’s the only misstep on this album. Every review will rightly mention the producers: ARCADE FIRE’s HOWARD BILERMAN, EFRIM MENUCK of GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR, and GRAHAM SUTTON (BARK PSYCHOSIS, JARVIS COCKER). The result is a vastly more ambitious disc than BSP’s earlier efforts, with big, ear-filling walls of sound grander and more enveloping than anything Phil Spector ever conceived of.

There’s plenty of contrasts, though – of dynamics, of timbres, of singer YAN’s various voices. One is tempted to divvy up the various tracks, even segments of songs or instruments, among the producers, with Menuck tagged for the instrumental “The Great Skua” and the haunted outro of “Down on the Ground,” Bilerman the majestically treading chant of opening track “All in It” and every cello and organ moment, Sutton such hard-rocking juggernauts as “Lights Out for Darker Skies” and amazing guitar sounds, and so on. But of course they’re working together, and the various influences are often juxtaposed, as on the closing track “We Close Our Eyes,” which after various avant atmospherics eventually becomes an elaboration of “All in It.”

I may seem to give the band itself too little credit, which would be wrong; their dark-burning intensity and energetic enthusiasm are exactly what makes this disc greater than the sum of its parts. The fact that their evolution over three albums and various EPs has avoided repetition will be mourned by some who want only the familiar, but refreshingly enables them from becoming outdated.

Filed under music britpop