British Sea Power
34
Audio CD
14 offers from $10.83
British Sea Power
26
Audio CD
14 offers from $11.28
British Sea Power
78
Audio CD
17 offers from $7.96

Track Listings

1	All In It
2	Lights Out For Darker Skies
3	No Lucifer
4	Waving Flags
5	Canvey Island
6	Down On The Ground
7	A Trip Out
8	The Great Skua
9	Atom
10	No Need To Cry
11	Open The Door
12	We Close Our Eyes

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

British Sea Power are a four-man indie rock band based in Brighton, England. Their style ranges from the sweeping, often epic, guitar pop sound to the visceral and angular. They have likened their sound to a variety of groups, from The Cure and Pixies. They have most often been compared to Joy Division. This is their third album and it features the singles 'Waving Flags' and 'No Lucifer Critics' The band is comprised of: Yan (Scott Wilkinson) - vocals, guitar Noble (Martin Noble) - guitar, Hamilton (Neil Wilkinson) - bass, vocals, guitar , and Wood (Matthew Wood) - drums. Reviews are 'A masterpiece of epic proportions.'-The Word. 'Ambitious, impressive and genuinely moving-chock full of epic music and seductive melodies! '- Q EMM/Rough Trade. 2008.

Amazon.com

British Sea Power return with their third and finest full-length. Here they reintegrate the rock with a slew of blistering guitars and unpredictable studio noisemaking worthy of their visceral live performances. Witness fist-pumpers like "No Lucifer" or the Bonzo-styled drumbeat bashed out under a climactic synth-string section on "Waving Flags." Better yet, "Down on the Ground" and "A Trip Out" both feature guitar riffs worthy of the Judas Priest songbook, before they're enveloped in the vast expanse of their accompanying songs. The sound here is raw and spacious. Guitars remain largely drenched in reverb, and various acoustic instruments grace the arrangements, along with various random noises and happy accidents. On "Canvey Island," vocalist Yan describes the fatal 1953 floods on the Thames estuary from the viewpoint of a football fan decrying the loss of memorabilia rather than lives. On "Atom" he decries the "bright but haunted" modern age through the apt metaphor of the split nucleus: "Oh caveat emptor / Open the atom's core." Brainy explorations like that, along with BSP's notoriously clever sense of humor, make the self-conscious title no surprise, but there's really no better way to describe it. This is what rock music can and should be. --Jason Pace

Product details

Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.5 x 5 inches; 2.71 Ounces
Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Rough Trade
Date First Available ‏ : ‎ December 10, 2007
Label ‏ : ‎ Rough Trade
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00111COHO
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1

Best Sellers Rank: #307,355 in CDs & Vinyl (See Top 100 in CDs & Vinyl)
- #3,099 in British Music
- #7,414 in Indie Rock
- #11,621 in Adult Alternative (CDs & Vinyl)

Customer Reviews:
20 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		79%
4 star		7%
3 star		7%
2 star		7%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

M. Irwin

Better with each listen

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2008

Verified Purchase

Most music I've picked up has always fallen into one of three categories: 1) instantly gratifying...and perhaps quick to fade as well, 2) instantly repellant...and no amount of re-listening or critical hype could win me over, and 3) slow to reveal its fascinating charms. These days, there seem to be precious few albums in this last category - I'll either like something or not and often my affections are too-easily disposable. Unfortunately, it's this last category that often would provide the greatest contribution to my list of all-time favorite albums. BSP have always been slow to reveal their charms, but their charms are prodigious. Give this and the rest of their catalog a thorough listen...and re-listen. If you like rock music, it will reward greatly.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Luann Yetter

Brits Get Bold

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2009

Verified Purchase

British Sea Power is big, bold and dramatic and puts on a terrific stage show full of passion and conviction. This album contains a bunch of rousing songs, call-to arms-guitar solos, and anthemic choruses, the kind of music that might want to make you punch your fist in the air, unless you've been to a BSP show, in which case the music will make you want to rip a branch off some poor unsuspecting tree and wave it in time to the music.

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2008

Verified Purchase

I can't get enough of this exquisite album. It may not quite be the equal of their first cd; but then how many albums can honestly be compared to "the decline of british sea power"? Forget the comparisons to ARCADE FIRE and U2. The crashing waves of guitar distortion, epic production and the intelligent (yet eccentric)lyrics make this collection of songs an instant classic.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

uberdave

british sea power

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2014

Verified Purchase

if you don't know british sea power, then you don't know jack! if you know them and don't like them, then you don't know s***!

Helpful

Rudolph Klapper

British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music? 9/10

Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2008

The glory days of England's naval superiority have long since passed, the epic colonial tradition lionized in films such as Master and Commander and demonized in The Pirates of the Caribbean saga having lost quite a bit of its fame since the first World War. Whether this is because of the lack of serious ocean warfare in recent memory or the British dismantling of their former empire, it doesn't seem to have worried the people of that innovative island country. Since 2000, they have found a new way to reassert their prominence: through the power of rock `n roll, particularly that of the eccentric, genre-bending brand.

From their formation, British Sea Power have seemed to be a band caught up in their own myth and pretension, releasing their debut album with the cover of a mock history book and the title The Decline of British Sea Power. A bewildering blend of the Arcade Fire and the Pixies for the hip, Encyclopedia Britannica-reading set, they put on shows in Cornish mines in giant bear costumes and went by one-word monikers such as Noble and Hamilton.

Thank God for the music, then. If listeners were able to get around their graduate thesis themes and lyrics, such as their love song to an Antarctica ice shelf on "Oh Larsen B" or their offhanded mention of the French Revolutionary calendar from their second album Open Season, they found a band willing to experiment in ways that few modern bands have dared.

British Sea Power's third and best album asks a simple question and proceeds to offer twelve astounding reasons to say "yes." Running the gamut from post-punk, angular rock to choral, Gregorian chant-influenced soaring melodies to sweeping, grandiose stadium rock, the band combines the disparate sounds from their first two albums into a whole that makes for perhaps their first thematically coherent record.

The album opens with "All In It," characterized by a simple marching drum pattern and vocalist Yan gently singing with an accompanying organ and a female choir before exploding into a shrieking guitar line and amplified feedback. Throughout it all, Yan continues to repeat the title of the song and advises the listener to "close their eyes," perhaps in order to more fully appreciate what is to come.

"Lights Out for Darkier Skies" is an instant classic, starting off with a ripping drum fill and anchored by a pulsating, melodic guitar line that calls to mind their countrymen in indie-rock outfit Razorlight. The song is six and a half minutes long and diverges halfway through into an U2-esque stadium-sized climax complete with call-and-response vocals and a guitar solo.

Do You Like Rock Music? continues to shift between the frenetic punk blast of their debut and the graceful pastoral anthems of Open Season, with some songs veering back and forth within their beginning and end. Future single "No Lucifer" opens with a haunting violin line and then is rudely interrupted by a raucous snare and a crowd of voices shouting "easy!" while Yan ponders, "is that what the future holds? / Kevlar or cherry wood / malevolence or good?"

Up tempo barnburner "Atom" sounds like a song the Strokes lost somewhere in the studio, deceptively beginning with a gentle piano melody before revving up into a frenzied party song with a jaded chorus complaining that "I just don't get it." Yan's vocals and the excellent drum work alone would justify buying the whole album.

The album closes as it began on the epic "Close Your Eyes," eight minutes of ethereal organ and guitar bursts while Yan repeats the lyrics from the beginning of the album. The song is a fitting curtain call, building to a wall-of-sound peak well the band throws everything and the kitchen sink into the production. Literally, the squeaks around the midpoint of the song sound like a plumber fine-tuning his work.

Sure, British Sea Power wear their influences on their sleeve: Yan's vocal stylings call to mind David Bowie, their orchestral approach to the production mirrors that of Canadian counterparts Broken Social Scene, their guitarist seems to have clearly studied the techniques of the Pixies and the Edge, and their penchant for lyrical nonsense and obscure subjects is more Radiohead than Oasis. However, it is what they do with those influences that make them a new and truly exciting band, separating them from the hordes of British rockers assaulting American radio trying to make a buck off of what their new wave predecessors did twenty years ago.

One cannot answer the album's question without seeing both sides of the subject, the good and the bad, the "kevlar and cherry wood." British Sea Power present both, at once pounding the listener with their punk influences while at another cranking up the orchestra and sweeping melodies to show a softer, more poppish side. With their third release the band has distilled these varying sounds into a fresh adventure into musical history and affirms that, hell yes, we do like rock music.

Helpful

Nick S

My Review as on punknews....

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2009

Often, I think as a reader that it is important for you to know the reviewer's history listening to the band that they are writing about. I believe this helps one to get a feel if the subject is for them, and also so the reviewer is actually being honest, as in not pretending they are a know-it-all.

I should start out by saying that I do not know everything about British Sea Power. I first heard about them almost a year ago, about right around the time this album came out here in the States. The reviews of their first album, as you may know, said they were akin to the dark-and-gloomy acts of Joy Division and Echo and the Bunneymen, just with more noise and a pop element.

Well, when I bought this album when it first came out due to the hype, even if I never heard their prior ones (and to date I still have not heard their first two), I was still quite surprised that this ominousness is now mostly drowned out in favor of U2-inspired anthems. The lyrics may be dark, but everything -- to the polished instrumentals, to the singer's chimed voice -- was quite like an arena rock band dishing out anthem after anthem. I was befuddled, as I am a big fan of my depression/razorblade-across-arm music and thus put the album down for a long while.

However, a little while later I found out that they were playing a show close to me. I don't know why, but I found myself at this concert barely knowing anything about the band. I had heard wild things about some of their other venue performances and was expecting to have a good time. Again, I was disappointed; the show was nothing special. In fact, I was more paying attention to my throbbing legs from standing in place during their act than the performance for most of the duration.

I have to admit that the live show was partly not as great as it could have been due to the venue they played in, its status in the city and how many people were actually at this show. Maybe the band just didn't care as much.

However, I remember the song that briefly seized my mind from my leg pain was called "The Spirit of St. Louis." This scorcher is so damn good live, that I can't ever throw enough adjectives its way, so I just won't bother. Yet, the song which shows them just cut loose and rock out, is a good reference point to Do You Like Rock Music?, as it shows what often makes this album both work and not work.

It should be said that Rock Music`s first few songs are almost as good as that aforementioned song, yet in a different way. The songs are less noisy, not as cool and slick, yet more organic. In that, it may slightly be standard indie rock, but are also done par-excellence. The jump-starter track, "All in It," walks a good line between being mood-setting and an all-out rocker. The second song, "Lights Out for Darker Skies," is an epic: Grand guitar lines weaving around whimsy vocals and un-clammy bass and steady drums, it's the stuff great albums are made of. "No Lucifer" is a chanting tribal fire of wit and passion, filled to the brim with anthemia, melody and pure indie rock classiness.

It begins to get slightly redundant with "Waving Flags," but still sells. Yet, after that, it settles down, as "Canvey Island" and "No Need to Cry" are probably too subtle for their own good. "A Trip Out" is drowned in too much murk and "Open the Door" doesn't properly rise until it's almost too late.

The female vocal-laden "Down on the Ground" may also seem slightly out of place and unwanted, but it's Atom that reminds you that the band can go places when they combine both rocking out with epic indie rock for something that is truly memorable. Aside from the breath-catching and beautiful "The Great Skua," their experiments do not work; "We Close Our Eyes" is one, but since it's a closing track it can easily be skipped.

In the end, Do You Like Rock Music? is damn fine in spots, but the question it presents is answered. Ya, I like rock music, I like it just fine...although, that is, when it, well, rocks.

*** 1/2 (Out of 5)

Helpful

Image Unavailable

Do You Like Rock Music

Customers who bought this item also bought

Track Listings

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Amazon.com

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.