British Sea Power (Other Stage, Saturday)

I have their album and I like it, I have seen them at the Isle of Wight festival and liked them, but I couldn’t work out what the hell was going on, so grabbing some foliage I headed down to check them out again.

Once again, the had the stage bedecked in foliage and once again they had the herons on stage, and the mad drummer wandering about and here is my problem with them. They are identical to the Isle of Wight festival set I saw. All of it is the same, the mad bear comes out at the end and the glory of seeing it first time becomes jaded, it’s a repeat performance. It’s all staged I realise, not off the wall and so the chaos on stage is diminished.

It’s still brilliant chaos as the drummer dives head first into the crowd, the guitarist fishes in the crowd dangling a heron on a fishing line while the bear moshes on stage. But it only works visually once as chaos after that it becomes too choreographed and I’d love the madness to be different, more spontaneous.



Still, they make beautiful music but again as it’s light and outdoors and they are further away it’s harder to relate to the band than a more intimate gig. They finish with Lately and it is such a powerful tune even yelped out, unaccompanied across the field and we huddle together and are moved by it’s haunting power. It may be a long track but it’s magisterial and their finest moment.

BSP are highly original, much maligned, often underrated but they aren’t far from building a force to be reckoned with, far from decline they are in ascendance. They just need to master the chaos and perform fully within the songs.

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