Renewed Admiration For British Sea Power

Over the past couple weeks, I've been going back to British Sea Power's 2005 release, "Open Season". I'd bought it around Christmas that year, and had consistently enjoyed over the next several months. But it got lost in the crowd of my 900 some albums, and as I came back to it, I was more than thrilled to have it coarsing through my ears yet again.


More than anything else on the album, I first fell in love with the lyrics. To be even more specific, I fell in love with Yan's use of particular words. Right off the bat, 'It Ended On An Oily Stage' throws you into Yan's state of mind where he is found writing "elegiac stanzas", after which he heads to the "coastalry regions of mind to see what [he'd] find". Brilliant as the brits would say. Some of the other songs that amuse me in similar ways are 'Be Gone', 'Please Stand Up', 'Victorian Ice', and by far my favorite, 'Larsen B':

You had 12,000 years, and now it's all over,
500 billion tonnes of the purest packed ice and snow
Oh Larsen B, oh won't you fall on me!
Oh Larsen B, desalinate the barren sea!

Oh I think it's the start of the end,
Like sawblades through the air, your winter overture,
Cut through everything, and now we're not so sure...

Probably the greatest song written for an Antarctic shelf. Ever. BSP does a great song with all the songs creating dreamy landscapes with great lyrics. Another one of my favorites is 'To Get To Sleep':

Eight hours a day
Call it twenty years
There's a place you can go
Free of lust, cupidity and fear

Cupidity means excessive desire (for money mostly). Not only do you get a great sound to chew on, you get a lesson in vocabulary. Now, that's good music! So enjoy the mp3's below, and grab the album when you can.

British Sea Power - Please Stand Up
British Sea Power - Oh Larsen B


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