Photo: Carsten Windhorst
If you believe certain sections of the tabloid press, Eastern European migrants are currently queuing around the block outside their respective embassies, vying for passports to enter the UK to A: steal our jobs and women and B: put ridiculous strain on our health service by rather unreasonably deciding to get ill and/ or pregnant. If the right-wing hacks had passed the Czech embassy in Notting Hill on Thursday night, they’d perhaps have had to reassess their ideas. A crowd of very British teenagers dressed in 1920’s military garb loiter around the entrance to the 1960’s prefab building, desperately trying to gain entry by any means – fair or foul. “Have you got a spare ticket?” asks one particularly dishevelled-looking sergeant major. “I’ll pay you ANYTHING."
The reason for this sudden desperate need to visit Czechoslovakia’s British outpost becomes clear after a short trek through an anteroom doubling as a makeshift bar – idiosyncratic rockers British Sea Power have set up shop in the backroom, and they’re about to launch their third – and best – record, ‘Do You Like Rock Music?’ to an awe-struck group of journos, PRs and invited guests. Billed as both an album launch and thank you to the Czech people, after the band recorded a portion of the record in their country, there is a celebratory tone to the proceedings tonight, with free Budvar and scotch eggs handed around before the concert. The advanced word on the new record has been unanimously excellent, and the feeling is that the band have finally taken the step up to the big league that they’ve threatened since their debut, ‘The Decline and Fall of British Sea Power’.
Since their inception in 2001, the Brighton oddballs have skirted a thin line between arcadia-influenced genius and art-rock mediocrity. While their thrilling stage shows, replete with bear costumes, Prussian military flags and tree branches stapled to speakers have created a devoted fan base, the general critical reaction has been that they’ve never quite fulfilled their potential – astonishingly imaginative in principal, but never too far away from being Franz Ferdinand nearlymen.
Tonight, however, British Sea Power blow these misconceptions out of the water. For, in front of the tiny crowd, they are astonishing. Brilliant, visceral, beautiful – the band pack in seven new tracks and a host of old favourites into an hour that shakes the Embassy to its very foundations. Taking to the stage without many of the gimmicks of yesteryear, there is a steely determination to British Sea Power tonight, and their new chamber pop direction sits alongside their more frantic old material perfectly. Opener ‘Atom’ is a 6-minute frenzied art rock-opus that out-Franzs Alex Kapranos’ bunch. ‘Lights Out For Darker Skies’, one of the records most transporting moments, sounds like the best Arcade Fire song they never recorded – a hymn to a forgotten Britain without the sulphurous glow of “Daisy chains of lights around the city now/ They glow but never quite illuminate”.
Much has already been made of new single ‘Waving Flags’' infectiousness, already dubbed the ‘festival song of the summer.’ While the ode to eastern bloc immigrants soars wonderfully tonight, with its crowd-friendly lyrics about “astronomical fans of alcohol”, the crowd seem just as enamoured with ‘No Lucifer’s’ “Easy! Easy! Easy!” chant. Culled from 80’s wrestler Big Daddy, and latterly football stadiums across the country, it’s perfect for both the boozed-up muddied masses and shoe-gazing scenesters that will populate the fields of Great Britain over the summer – expect to hear it chanted in a Reading campsite near you.
But if this all sounds a little too ‘guitars set to epic’ for your liking, BSP still know how to cut loose and deliver a blistering blast of Pixies-style noise - old favourites ‘The Spirit of St. Louis’ and ‘True Adventures’ are dispatched with almost devilish glee by taciturn frontman Yan, and by the time they play breakout single ‘Remember Me’ even embittered music journos are hurling themselves into an impromptu mosh pit in the middle of the carpeted function room.
The raucous concert ends with guitarist Noble climbing atop the makeshift speaker stack as fans invade the stage. As ‘Carrion’ segues seamlessly into the improvised ‘Rock in A’, he is born aloft by the handful of enthusiastic obsessives, destroying a light in the process. There is a moment, as the band leaves the stage, that you think that they’ve turned the corner, lost that British eccentricity, becoming the devil-may-care rock band they’ve always threatened to be.
Then Noble reappears, sheepishly asking the audience to re-hoist him to fix the light fitting. It’s a fitting end to a concert that may finally launch BSP into the public consciousness once and for all – they’ve lost none of their charming quirkiness, they’ve just added astonishing songs. Best band in Britain? Don’t count against them.
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