BRITISH SEA POWER: FROM THE SEA TO THE LAND BEYOND (2013)
1) From The Sea To The Land
Beyond; 2) Remarkable Diving Feat; 3) Strange Sports; 4) Heroines Of The Cliff;
5) The Guillemot Girls; 6) Suffragette Riots; 7) Heatwave; 8) Melancholy Of The
Boot; 9) Be You Mighty Sparrow; 10) Berth 24; 11) Red Rock Riviera; 12)
Coastguard; 13) Perspectives Of Stinky Turner; 14) Bonjour Copains; 15) The
Wild Highlands; 16) Docklands Renewed; 17) The Islanders.
Apparently, it was a stroke of luck when these
guys decided to call themselves British Sea Power and write grand songs with
massive hooks — these days, whenever somebody films a movie that involves (a)
the sea and (b) the British Isles, they are the first band to whom people turn
to provide the soundtrack. This time, it is for From The Sea To The Land Beyond: Britain's Coast On Film, a
documentary feature by Penny Woolcock on various aspects, historical and
modern, of everyday life on Britain's coastline. I have not watched the movie,
but gather, from various descriptions, that, like most such documentaries,
that the two major types of reaction to it would be either «breathtakingly beautiful»
or «butthurtingly boring», depending on whether one is an idealistic,
impressionable artistic soul or a jaded cynical bastard. In both cases, though,
the soundtrack by British Sea Power will be a natural part of the impression.
Although the album is about as long as the
movie, featuring complete versions of compositions that were abridged in the
documentary, it is definitely a soundtrack, whose purposes are secondary to
the visuals. Some of the music is not new at all, but borrows old instrumental
mixes from their previous albums (unfortunately, at this point I cannot state
for certain which ones are which and am merely repeating outside information); some
is new, and a few numbers even
feature vocals, but on the whole, this is monotonous, atmospheric stuff,
absolutely typical of BSP with their symphonic echoey sound, ringing guitars,
swooping violas, crashing percussion, and sound effects (waves beating? check.
thunder rolling? check. gulls shrieking? check, etc.), and featuring very
little in the way of individual hooks. Well, a little. But not much. Really, it's not supposed to. Living on the
British coast is not much of a hook-filled activity anyway — it's more about
being one with nature, or with hoarding cultural memory.
The track titles, while they probably
correspond to specific parts of the feature, are not that well correlated with
the music. ʽSuffragette Riotsʼ, for instance, beginning with some isolated
piano chords and the omnipresent seagulls, slowly builds up towards a
crescendo, but hardly of the «riot» variety — these guys are the children of
shoegazers and they couldn't properly picture a «riot» under pain of having to
listen to Agnostic Front for the rest of their lives. ʽHeatwaveʼ has a
lovely-lazy guitar/viola dialog going on, but I wouldn't necessarily call it
indicative of a «heatwave» (and it isn't atmospherically different from
something like ʽStrange Sportsʼ), for instance. In fact, the album could definitely use more variety — that is,
if the idea of the movie itself, as I understand it, wasn't that «the more it
changes, the more it stays the same».
In brief, this is what happens when you get
British Sea Power to just be British Sea Power and not worry all that much
about anything else. I like their «average» sonic vibe a lot, but a thumbs up
for this album would at least have to mean that it «got me» a couple of times,
and it didn't: it was just nice in the usual, predictable, reliable way. But it
is most definitely for you if you are one of those types with a habit of
sharing «This Photographer Shoots The Most Amazing Pictures Of The World That
Will Totally Amaze You And Make You See The World In A Totally Amazing New
Light And Your Life Will Never Be The Same» links on Facebook. I myself tend to
gravitate towards The Onion on those matters, so I'll just leave this record
unrated, for justice' sake, and secretly hope that nobody on the British Isles
is currently envisaging a UK-based movie remake of The Old Man And The Sea.
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