postscript: british sea power

Oh, and a quick update on another gig I saw recently - me and Anne-So went to see British Sea Power debuting a raft of new material at The Pressure Point last week; and witnessed a really tremendously satisfying set by a band that seem to delight in provoking contrasting feelings in me - I've seen them six or seven times now and I tend to love them one time and feel really disappointed the next. This was definitely one of the former occasions, the band sensibly dropping most of their last album - which I initially really rated, incidentally - to concentrate on the more agressive, frantic stylings of their first, and a bunch of new songs which, tellingly, hark back to their early stuff too.

That's not to say that they've fallen into the trap of recycling old material, but they've perhaps realised that when they're playing their hard, dark and fast stuff they sound like one of the best bands on the planet, whereas the rest of the time they sound like an average indie band. So the new stuff, much of it led by Hamilton's endearingly thin voice, utilises pounding rhythms, speedy basslines and razor sharp guitar sounds, and is - frankly - brilliant, and bodes well for an excellent third album. If they can just eradicate their occasional propensity for duff live shows then they might just fulfill all that early promise and fascinating imagery.