British Sea Power and The Flaming Lips must be kindred spirits. In addition to touring together, both bands have reputations for performing some of the most bizarre live shows around, involving anything from Asiatic black bears to peregrine falcons appearing on stage for the former and acid-dancing roadies in animal suits and Teletubbies for the latter.
The two groups have faced the same question in recent years: What do you do to follow up an album that won huge critical praise by sounding like pop music for the deranged?
Enter Open Season, the second album from Britain's favorite nautically inclined eccentrics. Just like the group's debut The Decline of British Sea Power, its follow-up arrives with obscure literary references and nature fixation in tow.
On Open Season though, the band has pared down its list of influences in such a way that any randomly selected track could be said honestly to sound like a British Sea Power song. Where Decline borrowed in equal parts noise and the more disturbing side of their lyrics from the Pixies, Open Season is much more centered around such homeland heroes as Pulp and Echo & the Bunnymen.
The most significant difference between British Sea Power's first and second albums comes out on the first track of Open Season. Gone is the Pixies-ish guitar burn of \Apologies to Insect Life."" In its place is the melody-heavy ""It Ended On An Oily Stage.""
This contrast shapes much of the album, where the angry guitar fuzz that added tension to the band's earlier songs has been traded for cleaner, prettier hooks. It's an exchange that works to produce more ear-friendly songs like ""Please Stand Up"" and the album highlight ""Be Gone,"" but it's hard not to miss the searing main riffs from older works like ""Remember Me"" and ""Fear of Drowning."" What the band has not lost, however, is its knack for writing excellent choruses, which, as the driving ""How Will I Ever Find My Way Home?"" demonstrates, often recall the power of the group's early material.
Lyrically, Open Season is heavily infatuated with the great outdoors. In some cases this slant lends itself to oddball humor, as is the case with ""Oh Larson B,"" possibly the first love song ever written about an iceberg (""Oh Larson B! Oh, fall on me!""). Other times, such as in the plaintive ""North Hanging Rock,"" the ocean metaphors provide the perfect lyrical accompaniment to the sampled bird sounds and vocalist Yan's Bowie-like whisper.
With the greater part of British Sea Power's early grandeur still intact, coupled with more finely honed songwriting skills, Open Season is a commendable second effort from a band who's both smart and talented enough to make a mark.
