British Sea Power wears World War I military uniforms, perform next to giant prop birds and pipe in nature sounds for their live shows.
They go by single word names: Yan, Hamilton, Noble, and Wood. Are they last names? Are they first?
They reference Russian literature and have a fascination with the history and national character of the Czech people.
They even slapped the word “classic” on the cover of their own debut album, “The Decline of British Sea Power.”
But they’re not pretentious. They’re just not.
Call it a hat trick, but their even greater feat is the serendipitous greatness of “The Decline” one of the very few albums that’s at its best in the middle, but revelatory at both ends.
After a pleasant wordless chant-part Gregorian, part Disney high seas movie-the album gets off to a not necessarily false, but misleading start.
“Apologies to Insect Life” and “Favours in the Beetroot Fields,” with their grinding waves of surf guitar and spastic vocal performances from Yan, are may be what The Pixies hope to sound like if their much-rumored reunion ever pans out, but are not the stuff of which great debut albums are made.
Luckily, they’re not even the stuff of which British Sea Power are made. As if the opening minutes were just a trick to scare off all but the open minded, it’s fair to say that “The Decline” really begins with the Phil Spector organ explosion that introduces “Something Wicked.”
From here on in, the tempo is taken below the seizure inducing pace of the first two songs, the songwriting approaches anthemic levels of melodicism and emotional power, and the sonic textures chart the furthest reaches of the Indian Ocean.
More so than many other modern acts with great record collections, British Sea Power has a clear idea of how they want to sound.
Guitars are produced with relatively the same amount of trebly distortion throughout.
The rhythm section maintains a fluid, slithering foundation: oceanic, but more like lolling about on a tiny skiff than cruising on a massive destroyer.
A fourth generation disciple of Bowie, Yan rasps as if he has as much chance of coughing as having an emotional breakdown, and he knows exactly how to deliver his most powerful lines, like “You know how they say/The past it is a foreign country/How can we go there?” from “Lately.”
Still, they keep their sound open enough to make room for small moments of psychedelia, like the choir of angels joining in for the chorus towards the end of “Blackout,” and to ensure that all fourteen minutes of “Lately” are completely enthralling.
They even go pastoral on the folk-dance album closer “A Wooden Horse,” which makes a tender metaphor of the Trojan horse: “Oh, bring it in and let us see it.”
Whereas even some of the best debuts capture a band awkwardly struggling to forge their influences into a coherent, unique sound, British Sea Power have worked all that out already.
They take the romantic wistfulness of late-period Britpop, and reinfuse the post-punk energy that was present in the early days of the genre.
The influences are tangible-Echo & the Bunnymen in a chiming guitar figure, Joy Division in a stuttered rhythm-but serve more as an extra coat of sealant on an already well-built vessel than as the entire framework.
What initially appears as pretension is soon revealed as goofy charm, and British Sea Power may have just charmed their way into making the debut of the year.
