Moving from the frenetic tumble down sound of debut 'The Decline of...' BRITISH SEA POWER have somewhat polished the edges for 'Open Season' even if it's more the edges of a nonagon than of a square.
Although lacking in the nervous energy that 'The Decline of...' harnessed, it's an accomplished and resounding step in the right direction. Perfectly unassuming, it's wholly detached from the tumultuous aural assault of their live shows and their debut. 'Open Season' strikes the perfect balance in combining the serene with the unstable, inviting you to listen and delve deeper. It's a tentative sweep towards the mainstream that leaves the band with morals intact and preserves their cult status. Musically there's an added sense of radio friendly, but there's still an ambiguous sense of random that drapes the album and it's this dynamic that renders them vitally important in the current climate of conventionalism.
Swapping the frenzied guitar advances and borderline vocal hysteria that characterized their sound, they’ve retained all the idiosyncratic charm that made them so agitative and animating in the first place, but these qualities remain solely lyrical. 'Open Season' is as good an example of rambling guitar pop that you’re likely to hear this year. Adorned with Yan’s placid and tender vocals and pastoral backdrops of seamless guitar, violin and piano add a waving sense of crescendo that doesn’t threaten to explode into ‘Apologies of insect life’ or ‘Spirit of St Louis’, instead choosing to wallow in its own beauty.
Fear not, as British Sea Power haven’t taken up the Coldplay anthem formulae in it’s entirety, if anything they’ve added a personal touch and made it their own. Amidst persistent guitars, ‘We found god, in a Wiltshire field, and you did not’ rings out on ‘It Ended On An Oily Stage’, while ‘’Oh Larsen B’ is a song about an iceberg and how many bands would dare introduce ‘ventricles’ to the popular music vocabulary?
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With these being some of the few traits we’d expect of the band, the main surprise is that ‘Open Season’ could make a perfectly amiable summer album. Ok it might not be in the league of the Beach Boys, but ‘Please stand up’ has an understated sense of optimism whilst ‘Leaving Here’ wins the contender for the Radio 1 playlist with its insect buzz riff and easy going vocals, but there’s still remains room for sentiment. ‘The Land Beyond’ takes on a solemn tone with apathetic violin and wistful wailing vocals, whilst ‘North Hanging Rock’ is a drawn out, disinclined affair that becomes almost dream like as the closing line ‘Drape yourself in greenery, become part of the scenery’ takes on special significance as Yan sings and whispers breathlessly, he's only taking yours away.
It’s an album that exudes a confidence in its accomplishment. Unhurried and lackadaisical, there’s no desire to accommodate anything that’s not already there, and although British Sea Power aren’t quite a square peg in a round hole, they aren’t about to become a circle either.
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