Track Listing

1. It Ended On An Oily Stage
2. Be Gone
3. How Will I Ever Find My Way Home?
4. Like A Honeycomb
5. Please Stand Up
6. North Hanging Rock
7. To Get To Sleep
8. Victorian Ice
9. Oh Larsen B
10. The Land Beyond
11. True Adventures

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10382 in Music
• Released on: 2005-04-04
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Brighton's British Sea Power are a band that perhaps shouldn't exist in the 21st Century, but a listen to their fine second album Open Season ought to be enough to convince you that it's a good thing they do. BSP are antiquated in sound as in style – although their music doesn't quite hail back quite as far as those WWI-style military jackets might suggest, stabilizing round about the mid-'80s in empathy with post-punk-touchstones Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. It's a keen sense of the theatrical and the absurd, however, that ensures tracks like "It Ended On An Oily Stage" and "To Get To Sleep" are anything but museum pieces: frontman Yan – BSP don't do surnames – overcomes his slightly limited range by investing every utterance with Box Of Delights wonder, imploring the listener to "drape yourself in greenery/become part of the scenery" on 'North Hanging Rock'. That's rock'n'roll the British Sea Power way: live fast, die young, leave a good-looking copse --Louis Pattison

Album Description
Open Season is the second album by British Sea Power, the Brighton-based quintet who dress in old British war uniforms and surround themselves with taxidermised animals. Open Season has attracted big names to the helm: the majority of the album was produced by Mads Bjerke (Spiritualised, Primal Scream, Girls Aloud) and mixed by Bill Price (Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sparks). Two tracks were recorded and mixed by Graham Sutton (The Delays, Bark Psychosis) and Phill Brown (Sly Stone, Led Zeppelin, Talk Talk). The band believe that you see great things from the valley, and small things from the peak, and have aimed, with Open Season, to bring both perspectives.

CD Description
'Open Season' is the second album from the quirky Brighton based outfit British Sea Power. Produced by Mads Bjerke (Primal Scream, Girls Aloud) the album continues with the band'sunique indie rock sound being likened to Joy Division, The Divine Comedy, and Echo & The Bunnymen. The single 'It EndedOn An Oily Stage' is also included.

Customer Reviews

regions of mind
This is a great album from Brighton's - and Britain's - most distinctive and exciting band. It is a less abrasive and more upbeat album than 'The Decline of BSP', more 'radio friendly' you could say.

Single 'It Ended on an Oily Stage' is a prime example of this, a great pop song frayed at the edges. [The fade-out reminds me slightly of Wilco's 'A Ghost is Born', a reference point perhaps]

But otherwise most key BSP motifs remain. Their pastoral fixation [The song 'Oh Larsen B', a standout track, is an ode to an Antarctic ice shelf!], angular guitar from Noble, Yan's breathless vocals.

Bassist Hamilton also has his share of lead vocals, most memorably on the closing, seven and a half minute, 'True Adventures'. Opening with peals of thunder and a general cacophony that recalls Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the track then morphs into a quite exquisite ballad - epic, widescreen rock at its finest.

Barmy (and slightly more accessible than last time) Brilliance
It's always nice when a record exceeds your expectations, particularly when you're expecting quite a lot.

'The Decline of British Sea Power' is a great record that rewards the more patient listener, although many find the rawness of some of the tracks at bit hard to take.

'Open Season' dispenses with most of the rough edges, and replaces them with an expansive sound which although perhaps less challenging, is at times bold and upfront, and at others beautiful and reflective (the cello on 'The Land Beyond' being one of many highpoints). Stomping pop tunes and brooding epics a speciality.

An apparent obsession with UK wildlife and World War II may not invite mainstream attention, and even the most attentive listener won't have a clue what they're on about most of the time, but in truth this is a great rock/pop album that offers something with that bit more magic than your usual Zutons/Arctic Monkeys/Futureheads etc etc plodders.

My favourite album of 2005 by some distance

Power to the British
This is the BSP's second album, following on from The Decline of BSP. All in all, this sequel is blander than their classic debut. The tone is generally sweeter than the first and the songs seem to blur...
That's until you really get under its skin. When you do, you'll discover every song's a carefully composed gem and they flow from one another with such sublime excellence that is seems like a steady stream of musical harmonies. The album is perfectly balanced to be up-lifting and soothing, but powerful and evocative at the same time. The songwriting's as good as their previous outing but a lack of ambition musically could have killed off this band. However, BSP somehow manage to make it work for them.
This album lacks songs with the same gusto as the incredible Remember Me, with the possible exception of Please Stand Up, a song that oozes glorious pop bliss. Other stand-outs include How Will I Ever Find My Way Home?, a song that unleashes the otherwise sub-dued guitars to good effect. Also, Tracks 7 and 8 are as catchy as hell, and the Land Beyond has Radio-Friendly written all over it. True Adventures is a fine sequel to their epic Lately and North Hanging Rock blooms and blossoms over time, but I can guarentee your personal faves will differ as all of the songs are worthy of mention.
Overall, it lacks the Oomph factor of The Decline of... and offers less stand-out beauties and Apologies to Insect Life is an unfortunate casualty as BSP attempt to broaden and mature to compose a masterpiece. Not a revolution, just a carefully-plotted evolution of a great band