REVIEW: British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
Brighton-based indie-stalwarts British Sea Power return next week with their fourth album-proper, Valhalla Dancehall, following last year’s film score for the 1934 documentary Man Of Aran. The band have been consistently praised within the British media and being otherwise unfamiliar with their prior-work I thought the forthcoming release of this album would be the perfect excuse to get into British Sea Power.
Opening with anthemic, shouty, “Who’s In Control”, Valhalla Dancehall immediately takes a massive leap in the right direction. It’s certainly attention-grabbing, with the lead vocals sounding angry, in a delightfully-British way. This frantic nature continues over into the second, brilliant, Cure-alluding, track “We Are Sound”, that unfortunately focuses around this title as a choric statement. It’s possibly a little too reminiscent of more laddy, balls-out stadium rock and for me, jars against the indie-styled music I’d expected British Sea Power to be.
This is where the album loses and sense of urgency and the exciting quality that pulls you in, headfirst. The third track “Georgie Ray” is slow and plodding, coming across as boring rather than solemn whilst the songs following, “Stunde Null” and “Mongk II”, do nothing that will entice you either. The album picks up again a little with “Luna” but I think it is on “Baby” that British Sea Power shine.
It does everything right where the aforementioned “Georgie Ray” went wrong. It’s at once sombre and alluring, a song that actually sounds quite fascinating. Reminding me of a more stripped back, less harmonized Grizzly Bear, it’s a little like the song they did with Feist for Dark Was The Night, and I honestly wouldn’t of minded for an album full of songs like this one.
“Cleaning Out The Rooms” kind of follows-suit and it’s one of the better songs on the album for this. Yet, I can’t help but think that British Sea Power are a band in two minds, as some of the songs here cut a musical swathe so different it just seems obtuse to put them all together. “Living Is So Easy” sounds like cocky-indie-pop and “Observe the Skies” is just cliche, “Let’s lie back and observe the skies”, I mean, seriously?
However, contrast can be good, as “Thin Black Sail” demonstrates. It sounds, arguably, a little more punk, but also a bit like Arctic Monkeys’ Humbug album. It’s quite refreshing. But when the rest of the songs seem either over the top examples of tried and tested indie or overtly attempting to be solemn and nice, the album’s lack of cohesiveness bleeds through. Of course, not all albums sound the same across every track, a flaw in my logic you might say, but when the varying concepts come together in a unflattering way, the album fails.
“Once More Now” is much too-long than it should ever have been, clocking at over 11 minutes, and “Heavy Water” offers nothing new. British Sea Power’s Valhalla Dancehall, however, is an album that, on the whole, isn’t that bad. It’s kind of boring, a little repetitive, but due to a few saving graces it maintains some quality that stops it from becoming a total disappointment. I’ll be sure to look into their prior albums soon though, because, more than anything, Valhalla Dancehall has piqued my interest in British Sea Power.