Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Sea Power’s first release under their amended moniker finds them continuing down their own distinctive path
Golden Chariot Records
Released: 11.02.22
If the name feels vaguely familiar, there’s a reason for that: having decided to trim their name in advance of the release of their latest album as a rejection of parochial and imperial values – no British please, we’re humanists – the band now known as just Sea Power will be instantly recognisable to even the most cursory fan on Everything Was Forever.
Occupying an odd, almost extinct niche within the music industry, Sea Power survived hype by never becoming too commercial a prospect, outlived irrelevancy by sticking to their guns and with the support of a dogged, fanatical following, becoming that more recently extinct species of a genuine, beloved cult act. By the sounds of this record, that space in the margins of the mainstream seems to suit them just fine.
Much of the first six tracks feels like an enjoyable exercise in throat clearing, a run through of the assorted modes Sea Power have worked in over the years – the rural Galaxie 500 worship of Fire Escape In The Sea, sky-scraping post-rock on Two Fingers, or Doppelganger’s rambunctious post-punk – that makes for a fun precis of just what Sea Power are about, but not too much more.
Instead, the real heart of Everything Was Forever lies in its perversely backloaded end stretch: Folly’s fizzing synth pop is as immediate a single they’ve ever written, Green Goddess an exercise in rock music as all-consuming empathy and the album’s outright masterpiece Lakeland Echo, a Lake District hymnal that also serves as a warm tribute to dual songwriters/frontmen Jan and Neil Wilkinson’s late father.
For all of Everything Was Forever’s virtues however, it does serve as a slightly unwelcome confirmation that their more immoderate and playful side seems to have largely fallen by the wayside: unwieldy as it might have been, the brash ambition of an album like Valhalla Dancehall is missed here.
If not a statement of grand rebirth then, Sea Power’s first release under their amended moniker finds them continuing down their own distinctive path – one that any fellow travellers will always be welcomed down with a kindly embrace and some bracing refreshment.
