M
ost rock is theater.
Or perhaps I should say, the whole ‘rock star’ concept is theater. Flip through pop culture today and see all the musicians trying to look hard or alt-punk or pop diva — a self-perpetuating feedback loop of media influencing culture influencing media — music often seems secondary. That’s why it’s so refreshing (to me) to find the bands that you can sense are just themselves up on stage, unadulterated, playing the music they want to play, even if it doesn’t sell as many records or make the teen girls swoon.
British Sea Power dress in military uniforms on stage. They fill the stage with assorted foliage. And life-size plastic birds. Their lyrics sound quasi-Victorian. Their CD covers look quasi-Victorian. You can dismiss them as eccentric or quirky, but really they’re just taking the whole rock star thing to its logical extreme. And done cleverly, with intelligence and the right amount of self-awareness, this can be refreshing too.
Of course, no matter how clever, the music has to hold up the weight of the theatrics, and on their debut full-length, The Decline of British Sea Power, British Sea Power’s does. This is serious music, more serious than you might assume from bands that typically go the costumed stage persona route. (As I was trying to describe British Sea Power to a friend, he was reminded of a band called The Upper Crust who channeled AC/DC, but dressed up as 18th century aristocrats and sang songs with titles like “Let Them Eat Rock,” and called themselves Lord Rockingham, Duc d’Istortion … but I digress.)
After a brief male a cappella prologue, The Decline of British Sea Power opens with two punk-leaning numbers which sport the most intriguing titles on the album (“Apologies to Insect Life” and “Favours in the Beetroot Fields”) before settling down to the dark, more melodic pieces that form the rest of the album. Other reviews tend to compare British Sea Power to Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen – it’s true, the songs do have the same brooding feel and instrumentation that I think of when I remember those bands and their ilk from that early 80’s era. Highlights for me at the moment are the songs that perhaps best exhibit this brooding melodicness: “Something Wicked,’ “Fear of Drowning,” and “The Lonely” (I’ll drink all day and play by night / Upon my Casio, electric piano). Another stand-out, simply by its length, is the 14-minute “Lately,” which starts out as a typical song before building and pulling in the punk tendencies that opened the album.
The Decline of British Sea Power did take several listens to grow on me, but it’s a solid album, and about two-thirds of the songs are beginning to take their hold on me. Once I see the full reputed oddness of their live show, maybe I’ll be hooked.
(You will be able to see the full reputed oddness of their live show soon, on March 15th at The Black Cat in DC.)
