“Seven minutes and 11 seconds of this is essential”
Written for the first edition of the new magazine-format Sunday Herald, published on January 9, 2011.
British Sea Power: Valhalla Dancehall (Rough Trade)
As the gulf between genres grows ever greater, and any pretence at a unified theory of pop music topples helplessly into the void, British Sea Power must feel reasonably safe. Like Field Music, they’re one of those bands so beloved of the ageing indiescenti who keep Radio 6 alive: all assured melodies and stolidly impressive songwriting that belies a listening history long on white canonical rockers and desperately short on surprises. It’s meat-and-potatoes music — albeit of the farmer’s-market variety.
Valhalla Dancehall is the Brighton-based band’s fifth album, and you might even go so far as to call it adult-oriented rock for the early 21st century. It’s informed and aware (just listen to those little electro-squiggles in among the crunchy riffs of Stunde Null), yet with far too many forays into the studious and predictable (does anyone really need a six-minute slow ballad called Baby?) For the first seven tracks there’s an almost suffocating sense of control about the music, so much so that the frightened horse on the sleeve begins to suggest a cover-artist with a finely honed sense of irony.
It’s round about the halfway mark that things pick up a bit. Living Is So Easy and Observe The Skies are simpler and more direct than anything that’s come before: like British Sea Power have stopped trying so hard and are being the band they want to be, not the one they think they should be. But it’s the mini-epic Cleaning Out The Rooms that’s the show-stopper: a beautiful repeating viola figure slowly drenched by a gargantuan, slow-motion wave of sound. The restrictive rock structure is abandoned to a howling wind of guitars, and British Sea Power erupt into something elemental, mesmeric and absolutely pure. Is there any chance of an album’s worth of this kind of thing? We can hope.
In the meantime, there’s a whole hour of music here. All of it is admirably crafted; none of it is any less than worthwhile; seven minutes and 11 seconds of it is essential. That might, just about, do for now.
