British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
Of the freshly wave of English acts of the Apostles, Brits Sea Mogul were constantly the well-nigh odd. First emerging basketball team long time ago, the Brighton four-piece would appear on stagecoach decked out in local leaf they'd collected themselves, as they hammered out their blend of Joyfulness Division and Cure-tinged rock covered in leaves and sticks.
As if importing nature indoors wasn't odd enough, the group would often have stuffed animals - ranging from owls to bears - with them on stage, which they routinely beat up to each one eventide.
The music to a fault was likewise arresting, with stunning moments of pulsating rock scattered across their first 2 albums, 'The Refuse of Brits Ocean Power', and the frightfully underrated 'Open Season'.
Such recordings, combined with their whimsical eccentricities, feature endeared them to a fanatic cult following, though that could wholly be about to change.
A 'Big' sounding criminal record, 'Do You Like John Rock Music?' has been garnering mouth off reviews and been justly marked as the first base requirement rock record album of 2008.
While most new bands extend to delve deep into the past to pluck the acts that will shape their sound, BSP experience looked towards modern music, and specifically towards Canada.
Colonnade Fire ar the first obvious influence here - from the church-like mantra of opener 'All in It' to the anthemic 'Waving Flags' with its reverb-soaked guitars and chorale swells.
Such influence is understandable, presumption that former Colonnade Fire drummer Leslie Howard Stainer Bilerman is ace of the album's ternion producers, no doubt lending the Brighton isthmus approximately of the studio apartment secrets he picked up during the recording of 'Funeral'.
Elsewhere, thither ar sunglasses of Interpol and The Fire Lips as BSP demand us on a voyage through their accept on Rock's history. 'Down On the Ground' fuses Interpol with The Ramones patch 'A Slip Out' nods to early Blur with its chirpy guitar and song meat hooks.
The Smudge comparisons carry on on 'No Motivation to Cry', which as well brings to head Canadians Broken Sociable Scene and Stars as it breezes by, piece 'Open the Door' has the air of a real British people contract on The Shins.
Chopped in amongst such musical theater styles though are BSP's really possess eccentric influences, with the album's lyrical contentedness fitly peculiar, taking in Danish nuclear physicist Niels Niels Henrik David Bohr, the Hitler Youth and immigration.
Hopping through Rock's genres, 'Do You Like Rock-and-roll Music?' rarely grates and rather invariably fascinates as varied musical slices and a dry lyrical witticism
L.A. Guitar Quartet
