Oh Guillotine
It’s been a long time since I found a record that I just couldn’t stop listening to. Longer still since I found two.
For the past week my headphones have been, as they say, pwned by British Sea Power. Day after day I’ve been listening first to The Decline of British Sea Power, then Open Season, then selected songs from each, and then repeating the whole affair mere hours later. For someone who prides himself on constantly listening to new music this is distressing behavior.
These two records are a little too good. Such a relatively young band should not be capable of such exceptional melodic construction and lyrical depth. If both records weren’t so hopeful, human, and blissed-out I’d suggest that something sinister is afoot. I’m not convinced that lead singer and lyricist Jan didn’t strike a Faustian bargain: “oh, sure, you’ll make two brilliant records, but the second track on the first record has to have a Dosteyevsky thing going on. Bwahahahahaha!”
If you’re taken with the historical bent of The Decemberists, imagine more rock, more musical diversity and risk-taking, more smarts, and more swearing. Take these lyrics from “Be Gone” on Open Season:
Agonic lines, ascendances and amatory tendencies From here to heart arrhythmias Oh don’t you know we’re not like this Oh Floreal Oh guillotine Oh Floreal I love your iridescent sheen As it reflects you and it reflects meFloreal, if you didn’t know (I sure didn’t) is the eighth month in the French Republican Calendar. Yeah. But it’s not all that dense. “To Get To Sleep” is full of simple themes and simpler rhymes; it’s just about as literal as it gets:
Melatonin, a little dose, takes things to a peaceful close Commerce runs through your veins And takes you from this waking plane Industry on your side To do what you do, when you get tired Eight hours a day – call it twenty years There’s a place you can go Free of lust, cupidity and fearLyrics aside, British Sea Power can freak the fuck out. “Lately” off their first record is a thirteen minute epic that closes in searing feedback, desperate shouting, and drum kit chaos. Somehow it all manages to stay in the Q And Not U realm of palatable dissonance. I’m kicking myself for not knowing about them and seeing them live sooner. God knows what crazy shit they used to do with that track.
Anyway. A band love affair is a peculiar thing, and though I hope you’ll share my enthusiasm chances are good that British Sea Power just won’t strike you the same way. Not everyone wants to sing along to songs about the Trojan Horse, and that’s fine.
So what records or artists can you listen to endlessly?