British Sea Power review

Are weird! Their live show is a bit touched a bit off the wall. They start off with the engine running and from then on it’s unstoppable. The guy with a tin hat and whacking a big drum with gaiters makes an impression, he it turns out also plays keyboards.

The music is different and works fantastically live. I have no words to analogise what sound it is. But go see and you’ll either love or loathe it, and it’s so much different to the album, so much more full.

Even if you hate them they are worth watchin’ for the bizarre stage antics. Or you can stare at the plastic owl or heron! I have to also add the guys doing the camera work for the big screen should get jobs for music videos (perhaps they have) cos it’s lively and vibrant and adds to the show.

At some point there appears from the stage a few bird calls maybe they’ve captured an owl while tearing branches down possibly from the backstage to cover the stage in foliage. What ever the sound it's full and layered and envelops us.

Eventually they realise we are there looking on and introduce themselves then they throw themselves back into the tunes. I don’t know the track names but a tune possibly called Leaving Here musters a cooling breeze and the bird noises continue. There are rousing tunes, brooding tunes and weird tunes that should not be but are and their sharpness is still great and the crowd appreciate what’s happening here. (Have you guessed I’m now a convert?)

However the songs take me away and I go introspective. Then as if they’d guessed I had to jar me from it a bear arrives on stage! He starts to maul the band and I snap out of it. The band appear to attack the bear with a heron. Then repeatedly thrash their guitars and smack them hard into the stage floor. The drumming bloke still in his helmet is on someone’s shoulders and they appear to still be making a tune! Suddenly it’s quiet, I’m not sure what I’d just witnessed but something inside me had been made blissfully happy, I like the shell shocked crowd around me rousingly applaud.

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