The most striking accruement made by British Sea Power in the 12 years since the release of ‘The Decline…’ has been the Peak District-via-every-brass-instrument-in-Sussex band’s fans. Although they can’t really be defined by any single element, BSP lovers have the whiff of a country summit or an afternoon looking at steam engines about them, rolling up to gigs dressed for a testing hike, three-quarter length shorts or sloganed t-shirts tucked into trousers.
Of the tees on display tonight, one produced by the band, “Heron Addict”, illustrated by the bird, seems the most symbolic of their quiet wit: made at a time when many bands under the indie rock umbrella preferred to profess their love of needles rather than nature, it encapsulates BSP’s counter-trend aesthetic. They’re not even anti-heroically cool, but they’ve outlived a lot of transparent fads.
It’s important to note all this to understand why this gig happens. Partly it’s a call of convenience: the band have apparently inherited certain rights now that the record has reached a ripe old post-contractual age. But it’s also a celebration of an underdog spirit which chimed with a stoically devotional set of people who would follow the band for the a decade: a soundtrack to the lives of listeners who are stirred by windswept hills, attracted to a kind of taut melodrama (they’ve recently taken to playing with symphony orchestras).
To watch them play the whole thing in full, then, feels special, if you can say that about a rock gig during which, for large sections, almost no-one moved. The band’s trademark stage furniture of branches and leaves are back, but the inanimate owls – staple observers of the occasional clubnight BSP curate at The Haunt – were apparently roosting elsewhere, perhaps disturbed by the earlier interplanetary psych-rock of Bo Ningen, go-to guys for these kind of support slots.
The band could, as they would possibly concede, have lost a few songs from the play-through, too – the spectacle, like a good walk, has its filler, but the moments when it sags are far outweighed by the moments, say, when Yan Wilkinson’s vocals quaver and soar, or Abi Fry’s violin playing seamlessly slips in. In the final stages, a guest from another album, ‘No Lucifer’ from the 2008 Mercury-nominated ‘Do You Like Rock Music?’, ups the power. The closer, a poignant rendition of ‘Wooden Horse’, leaves Wilkinson humbly thankful for a night proving BSP’s enduring, unique connection with their followers.
Concorde2, Wednesday 10th June 2015
Words by Ben Miller
