British Sea Power - Open Season (2005)

I found another good CD recently while rummaging through a used music store. It's the second album by a band I previously never heard of: British Sea Power, a six piece outfit base in Brighton, East Sussex, England.

The quirky band sounds distinctly English. Neither of the lead singers, brothers Yan and Hamilton Wilkinson, reveal any sort of British accent in their vocals but Americans never sound quite so cute while showing off eccentric songs filled with appealing, offbeat lyrics. Sonically, the album, Open Season, is full of loud, riff-filled, but melodic, modern rock with shimmering electric guitars.

The disc opens with "It Ended On An Oily Stage," a song previously called "Elegiac Stanzas." When the band decided that radio personalities may have trouble pronouncing the title they renamed it. Titles such as this one and the lyrics that go along with it prove their music is not the stuff top forty songs are made of.

"Everything you said was true
Everything you did was you
Everything I started with her
Ended on an oily stage where
I wrote elegiac stanzas for you
I hope and pray that they come true.

He found God in a parking lot, and you did not
I, I headed for the coastalry regions of mind to see what I'd find."

Another eyebrow raising title, "Oh Larsen B" is about a peninsula in Antarctica that collapsed several years before the song was recorded.

The album went to number 13 in the UK and it peaked at 38 on the American Heat Seeker's chart.

British Sea Power's sound has been described as a cross between The Pixies, Arcade Fire, and The Cure but to my ears they sound more like Squeeze or The Posies.

Find out more on the band's website.