British Sea Power

Do You Like Rock Music? | Rough Trade
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  February 12, 2008
3.0 3.0 Stars
inside_BRITISH-SEA-POWER---
British Sea Power’s answer to the question posed in the title of their third album is a definite yes: like its two predecessors, Do You Like Rock Music? — which the band recorded in part with Efrim Menuck of Godspeed You! Black Emperor — is grounded by pounding rhythms and saturated with post-Pixies guitar fuzz. But BSP’s stuff isn’t quite as simple a proposition as that might imply. For one thing, frontman Scott Wilkinson (known to fans as Yan) is attracted here to less-than-standard lyrical fare including England’s Canvey Island and the organic compound known as acetylene. For another, Wilkinson and his bandmates are just as fascinated by quietude and texture as they are by volume and thrust; long stretches of this CD sound more like Roxy Music than rock music. As anyone who’s seen one of BSP’s shrubbery-enhanced live shows can attest, these guys still use much of their unconventionality as a guard against their exaggerated fear of emotional cliché. That ensures that Rock Music is free of both the maudlin and the mundane, and oddly rousing, too.
Related: Hitsville UK?, No clock ticking, Rock-and-roll heart, More more >
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