British Sea Power - Let the Dancers Inherit the Party

The Quietus

About a week ago, shortly after hearing Let The Dancers Inherit The Party for the first few times – and still uncertain about it in my fanboy sort of way – my partner and I sat down to finish the third season of Halt And Catch Fire (a show about maladjusted programmers working in the earliest days of online gaming). It's 1990, and our protagonists find themselves at a party thrown by Atari. Here's how I remember it: the DJ throws the Pixies' 'Velouria' on the single turntable, everyone starts jumping up and down, exuberantly spilling red cups of beer, maybe they're singing along, rejoicing in the sort of ebullient community and commonality outsiders always feel when grouped together in fictions. It occurred to me then that this feeling of communion in the face of the uncertainty is exactly what British Sea Power are going for with Dancers. 



But the thing is, the world presented in that scene doesn't exist anymore, not really. As a 38-year-old Midwestern American, weaned on and formerly of college radio and red-cup, indie-rock house parties, this record evokes a rich strain of nostalgia. In consistently calling to mind – both in spirit and sonically – that era in which the CMJ charts mattered and SXSW didn’t feature a 100-foot-tall Doritos vending machine, it’s probably as “American” a record as BSP are ever likely to make. No windswept moors or Wicker Man vibes to be found here. This is a record of interiors, of cathartic gatherings around stereos, of anxious huddling around the radio.



Admittedly, this was something of a surprise, but it shouldn’t have been. Just take a look at Scott Wilkinson’s Baker’s Dozen, published on The Quietus in the run up to the album’s release: Pavement, The Pixies, Talking Heads, Teenage Fanclub – all college rock faves – peppered in amongst some oddball picks and the Baker’s Dozen Holy Trinity – Iggy, Bowie, and The Velvets. Look again, and you’ll see records regarded as follies (Iggy’s Soldier, The War Of The Worlds), discs that rank among their respective group’s most polished and accessible (Bossanova, Little Creatures), a pat best-of, and Rust Never Sleeps cited in defense of the guitar solo. Squint at the list and pieces of it start to look like a blueprint, or maybe a warning.

 A warning, because with BSP it’s sometimes difficult to predict which band you’re actually going to get. For those unfamiliar, theirs is a peculiarly bifurcated catalogue split between esoteric-reference-laden, slightly-off stadium rock and a sprawling, emotive strain of atmospheric post rock. (It’s not all that uncommon for casual BSP fans to embrace one and disdain the other.) Most of their records feature an assortment of both, but depending on the release, lean slightly this way or that. Lately, however, the band seems intent on reserving their more cinematic tendencies for their exceptional soundtrack work, meaning that 'proper' BSP LPs have become something of a showcase for their hooky choruses. 



And indeed, that’s what we have here. This is essentially their Bossanova or Little Creatures, an LP that brings their skewed pop sensibilities to the fore and mostly excises the extended elegiac atmospherics and any overly wacky digressions. When these elements are present, they’ve been blended into the record’s pop concoctions – at least five of which could be 'Velourias' or 'Roads To Nowhere', were the reality of the contemporary music business more accommodating. The most immediately striking of these is 'What You’re Doing', a gorgeous homage to New Order that plays around with new wave tropes so elegantly you’re left wondering why it took so many releases for them to properly get around to it. But then, BSP have always been a band capable of rare beauty – nearly everything on Dancers positively shimmers, from the bombastic 'International Space Station' to the melancholy 'Alone Piano'. Their only proper album with no tracks over six minutes, this is BSP at their most distilled. It's as concise a statement as the band seems capable of, as unified and coherent as any of their soundtracks.



Nostalgia can be a powerful thing. Despite its reputation, it can be useful, can even lead to action. Having grown up in the 1980s and witnessed the end of the Cold War, I never thought that the nuclear anxiety I experienced as a child would rear its head again. But I listen to the hymn-like 'Electric Kittens' or the exuberant 'Keep On Trying',and I remember how we used to cope with it. Likewise, when I find myself dumbfounded by my country’s Trumpian present, 'The Voice Of Ivy Lee' does its part to remind me how we wound up with this disaster. As celebratory as it can be, a deep vein of anxiety runs through Dancers, in this way it mirrors the times we find ourselves in – like all truly great pop records should strive to do.


Here in America, British Sea Power have always been something of a non-starter. Often regarding them as a caricature of eccentric, Keep-Calm-and-Carry-On Englishness with stadium aspirations, we completely miss the point. It’s a shame. In this age of grim uncertainty, they have as much to offer Americans as they do a post-Brexit UK. Keenly political, anti-fascist, and pro-immigrant, British Sea Power mine the past to give us what we need now.

Share this article:

Drowned In Sound 80

British Sea Power are a rare case. A group of gangly lads and lasses from the Lake District who can be confidently, and rightly, be labelled a cult group. From their weird, old England eccentricities to the huge duelling bears that appear on stage every now and then everything they do screams cult. Heck their fans have even been known to bring shrubbery to their gigs in some sort of weird offering to the gods of nature. Or something…

Despite all of this, on record the group have always been surprisingly accessible. From their debut The Decline Of… all the way through to 2015’s Sea Of Brass they have maintained a sound much larger and anthemic than a group so surreal have any right to harness. Their sixth studio album, Let the Dancers Inherit the Party, continues this trend to great success. By now we all know what to expect from BSP: whispered vocals, atmospheric soundscapes and ear worm choruses. However, the real question is whether this new record is an instant hit a la Do You Like Rock Music? or just a wee bit disappointing like their 'breakthrough' record Open Season.

The early signs are good. Very good. First single 'Bad Bohemian' sounds like British Sea Power doing an impression of early Noughties New Order. While this might not sound like the most appealing thing in the world you’re just going to have to trust me that it’s bloody ace. In fact, it might actually be one of the group's best singles to date. It demands the question be asked why the group aren’t headlining festivals ahead of some of the summers more questionable top spot bookings.

'What You’re Doing' slows things down with some shimmering guitars and cuddly vocals that throw up images of lost childhoods climbing trees and skimming stones. The track would be absolutely ideal for that trendy sort of coming of age film set in a dead end town. The type of film where everything’s in soft focus and the loser finds love in the end. I do like films like that. They make you feel dead warm inside, what with all their contrived romance and self-pitying narrative arcs.

Jan Wilkinson’s raspy voice are always a treat, but his vocal efforts on this album take his half whispered purrs to the next level. 'Electric Kittens' and 'Praise for Whatever' are soothing, distressing and other-worldly in equal measures. There’s something both comforting about the guitar tones that makes you almost doubt their beauty. It’s as if there is something dark lurking deep within, lurking in the background, never quite revealing itself.

This record is the group’s leanest to date. There’s no filler. It’s instant hit after instant hit after instant hit. By the time 'Alone Piano' fades out it’s clear that the cult of British Sea Power is ready to break on through to the mainstream.

I just hope that when they do they’ll still let me into their gang. Maybe I’ll bring them some branches. That’ll sweeten the deal.

The Guardian 80

(Golden Chariot/Caroline)

British Sea Power’s first album of new material in four years was written against a backdrop of what guitarist Martin Noble calls “politicians perfecting the art of unabashed lying, social media echo chambers and electronic toys to keep us befuddled”, and it brims with pre-Brexit panic. However, there is more hope than despair, as the songs look to ordinary people to escape “international lunacy”.

There’s real vim in these tunes – their most direct in years – and they dart along with the emotional vigour of vintage James or Echo and the Bunnymen. Sharp songwriting combines with an elemental, eerie production. The zippy, new-wave International Space Station recalls, of all things, Billy Joel’s It’s Still Rock’n’Roll to Me, but with demagogues and celestial imagery; Electrical Kittens is a nostalgic love letter to the early days of radio. Between the walls of guitars there is space, melancholy and – especially on reflective closer Alone Piano – a gently stirring beauty.

Pitchfork 73

For the past 14 years, British Sea Power have invited us to escape our current reality by retreating into a past one. Their Chariots of Fire chic is the least of it—British Sea Power records are invitations to unplug and bask in the beauty of nature, learn useful random phrases from foreign languages, and educate ourselves on forgotten events confined to history’s dustbin. (Ironically, this has the effect of prompting you to go online to brush up on the significance of, say, the German term “stunde null,” or investigate what exactly happened on Canvey Island in 1953.) Notwithstanding the occasional forays into film soundtracks and brass-orchestra one-offs, British Sea Power’s music has remained similarly impervious to the modern age. They sound forever ambered in an eternal 1984 when bands like the Psychedelic Furs, New Order, and Echo and the Bunnymen were building a bridge between caustic post-punk and stadium-sized pop.

However, the cruel irony about escapism is that, as the need for it increases during tumultuous times, so too does the nagging guilt of indulging in it. British Sea Power have teetered on topicality before—see: 2007’s pro-immigration anthem “Waving Flags”—but their new album counts as a direct response to their country’s current state, rather than an elaborate reconstruction of a bygone one. Dismayed by the black-cloud mood of post-Brexit Britain, the band designed Let the Dancers Inherit the Party as a beacon of light. It’s an album that emphasizes their most uplifting qualities: Yan Scott Wilkinson’s valorous vocals, guitarist Martin Noble’s glistening, Bernard Sumner-style leads, and—in the case of “International Space Station”—the sort of sweeping, stargazing melodies that imply the presence of a choir and symphony even in absentia. At the same, British Sea Power keep their capacity for epic bombast and dissonant digressions in check, resulting in their most focused, generous record since 2005’s Open Season.

British Sea Power albums have never been lacking for drama, but Let the Dancers Inherit the Party foregrounds a quality that can sometimes gets obscured in their detailed narratives and high-concept execution: emotional candor. The album’s central motivational anthem, “Keep on Trying (Sechs Freunde),” is built from a quirky Talking Heads-style disco groove and a warped German hook—“sechs freunde!”—that Yan lasciviously milks for its phonetic similarity to “sex,” like an over-enthusiastic street hustler trying to lure you into a red-light district peep show. But the phrase “sechs freunde” actually translates to “six friends”—presumably, a statement of solidarity among the band’s current sextet formation—and when Yan hits the cheerleading chorus, the song’s off-kilter essence transmutes into a comforting group hug.

By contrast, “Don’t Let the Sun Get in the Way” is one of the most rousing yet devastating songs in the BSP canon. It’s a shimmering soundtrack for blacked-out bedrooms that casts scenes of depression and prescription-pill addiction atop a turbulent rhythm that coils and crashes like waves into shore. And while Yan consults his trusty Encyclopedia Arcana from time to time, he pulls references with pointed contemporary resonance: The breezy, synth-sparkled “The Voice of Ivy Lee” name-checks a pioneer in the field of public relations—and corporate spin—to make a thinly veiled comment on Brexit-induced discord and bloodshed. “Kings of propaganda,” he sings, “Won’t you take another look at all the things you’ve done.”

As if to stabilize its weighty subject matter, Let the Dancers Inherit the Party is a remarkably steady album, at times to a fault. “You said the world was losing all its luster,” Yan sings on the opening “Bad Bohemian,” and so the group spends the next 47 minutes restoring its shine with gleaming starlit-surfaces, synth smears, and pulse-regulating mid-tempo motion. As such, brother Hamilton’s usual come-down contributions are even more subdued than usual, culminating in a closing, string-quivering reverie, “Alone Piano,” sculpted out of the Velvets’ “Heroin” haze. But while Let the Dancers Inherit the Party may not encourage the anarchic onstage theatrics that have defined the British Sea Power live experience, its cool composure belies a shrewd show of force. In the face of the political upheaval at home and abroad, British Sea Power offer a suitably British response: keep calm and carry on.