British Sea Power
Do You Like Rock Music?
(Rough Trade, 2008)

It’s always nice when a band takes their name seriously, especially in this day and age. What does a name like Vampire Weekend or Somebody Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin say about either of those bands, other than all the good band names have already been taken? It’s refreshing that the name British Sea Power opens up a veritable treasure trove of information about the band and their third, and best, album Do You Like Rock Music?.

From the Ian Curtis-like vocal delivery to the Brit-pop-through-a-funhouse-mirror guitar lines, these guys have clearly drank up everything on the English rock scene of the past couple decades, picked out the bits that fit, and tossed the ones that don’t. The “British” aspect of their name is the simplest part to get, but it’s the rest of their name that really speaks to their music. Do You Like Rock Music? is a grandiose and cinematic album that recalls a small ship being tossed around by a mighty powerful storm. The songs aren’t built like traditional pop songs, and at first they don’t seem very structured at all. They ebb and flow, building tension, which is then suddenly released. It’s only after repeated listens that the band’s method—pop songs hiding under the waves of fuzzed-out distortion and wet symbol crashes—reveals itself.

The band’s most basic reference point is the dark post-punk of fellow Brits, Echo & the Bunnymen, and on their first album, 2003’s wryly named The Decline of British Sea Power, the band seemed content exploring the nooks and crannies of Echo’s sonic palette with great aplomb. Five years and two albums later, the band has gone in contradictory directions. Most obviously they’ve taken epically-swirling prog-rock from their debut’s best song, “Fear of Drowning”, and honed it down to a science. The effect is that every song, from the brief “Trip Out” to the lengthy “Lights Out for Darker Skies”, is equally epic.

Although there’s a strong Brit-pop undercurrent at work here, it only shows up sporadically; when it does, the band is at its best. This is in evidence on two of the album’s consecutive early tracks that instantly rank among the best things the band has ever done. “No Lucifer” features the repeated chorus “ea-sy ea-sy” that echoes the victory chant of British professional wrestler Big Daddy. This is practically criminal in its numerous build-ups of tension, as each time the momentum is sucked out, replaced by mellow, poppy keyboards. It’s the type of masterfully restrained songwriting that only a small handful of bands are capable of. But all of the songs’ accomplishments are made to look like child’s play compared to the album’s centerpiece, “Waving Flags”, a sweeping, deeply humane song about the influx of immigrants into England from Eastern Europe that commends them both for their work ethic and heavy drinking habits. “Are you of legal drinking age? On minimum wage?” asks singer Yan Wiliknson, “Well welcome in from across the Vistula. You’ve come so very far, so welcome in, don’t be scared.” Buttressed by a chorus of cathartic “oohs” and a marching drum beat, the song is custom-built to be a massive shout-along at live shows, which is absolutely perfect for the most overtly political song on the album.

The album title, unlike the band’s name, doesn’t yield much certainty in its description. Do You Like Rock Music? can be taken a number of ways: as a sincere peen to the relevance of the band’s chosen medium, as a fists-in-the-air, crowd-hyping rhetorical question, or as an ironic mocking of the pomposity of the former. Lost in the nautical swell of the band’s powerful kaleidoscope of sound, it’s abundantly clear that, no matter the intent of the question, the answer is yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]