Album Stories: The Decline of British Sea Power

Album Stories is an ongoing series in which I wax nostalgic about an album and how it fits into my life.

If you talk to cool people, they might tell you that the humble 45rpm single is the perfect medium. I, however, remain a firm believer in the long play album as the perfect medium. I love a #1 hit single as much as anyone, but it seems to me that you have to grind it out to achieve perfection in an album: enough good songs, the correct track order, flow, vibe, artwork, etc. Trust me, I've bought albums instead of singles my whole life. Which is how you end up having owned “Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too” by The New Radicals instead of just the “You Get What You Give” single. There isn't an album story for every album I own, but there are certainly enough for a recurring segment.

Today’s album: 2003's The Decline of British Sea Power, the debut album by British Sea Power, a band from the North of England.

Chris Whitehead @chris_whitehead

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Summer, 2006: The Dragon Hotel, Swansea, Wales

I've been travelling to Swansea for work for a couple months. It’s a fairly miserable routine: Wake up early on Monday morning, make the drive down (5 hours on a good day), try and arrive in time for lunch, work all week, leave around lunchtime on Friday, hopefully get home in time for a nap and a Friday night.

At this point I'm on my second hotel, because after you spend a month or more at the same hotel, the staff start to "get to know you" and I don’t like that. Not only is it a little too Alan Partridge for my tastes, it's also weird because it breaks the unspoken pact of anonymity that hotels provide. I’ve always felt like Wales was more “foreign” than the rest of the UK, mostly due to the pervasive Welsh signage I suppose? Also, they care little for the English which, in spite of my standard protestations, I was lumped in with. Don’t get me wrong, caring little for the English is the correct choice, hence why I would like to not be lumped in.

* * * *

After 8 or so weeks of vaguely feeling out of place, Spring has now turned to Summer and I'm getting burned out on the travel and the associated loneliness.  At this point, it's me travelling down solo each week and working with some locals at the office, leaving lots of alone time for your pal CW.

Up to this point in a young adult life, the previous summer (2005) was the best summer I could remember, like fully idyllic. I had a couple different friend groups going and they all had good vibes. The weather was as good as it gets in that wet Northwestern corner of England (it wasn’t wet, for once). We spent time at the beach! Actually, just near the beach. You don’t fuck with the actual beach in Southport. There was never a "weed drought" (remember those?) Not only did England win The Ashes for the first time in 18 years, the 2005 Ashes is still referred to, 16 years later, as the greatest cricket series of all time. I've said it before, but I really think that Test Match Cricket, at its best, is as good as sport gets. This was better than its best.

A friend (who later turned out to be *not our friend*) had an empty house all summer, so we had a place to drink shitty beer and smoke shitty weed in peace. We were a bunch of dumb, young, idiot boys. We were all single, maybe for the last time. We were the boys of summer! (If the boys of summer were lame, non-threatening, stoner nerds.) In summation: it was a very fun time.

* * * *

A sunny Swansea day really isn't that bad. It is a beach town, after all. You can take a stroll and catch some rays. The work was mostly easy and over by 4pm every day. So, just for something to do, I take a wander through the sub-par shopping district and end up in a music store. I think it was an HMV, but I don’t remember. I'm just browsing, not really looking to buy anything, mostly killing time but this album cover jumps out of the rack at me:

What do we have here? A weird band name? Great! An album title that includes that name, but without just being self-titled? Great! A self-aggrandizing labeling of the album as a classic? I love it, I must have it, even though I don’t know what it is. And this is 2006, so I don’t have a smart phone in my pocket to look it up on.

I wander back to the Dragon, which was like a medium-nice hotel and 2006 is long enough ago that they had a CD player in the room in those days. Which is nice, as I don’t have to go sit in the car, in the parking lot, to listen to this CD. I initially thought I made a huge mistake, as this record kicks off with 40 seconds of monkish chanting. Oh boy, what did I do? But, that ends and then a big, fat bass part takes over and we are off to the races.  But, I am immediately wondering, what the fuck this fella singing is on about as these lyrics are pretty obtuse. (I still mostly don’t know what any of these songs are about. I have no problem with that.)

Sidebar: I have an ongoing #UnpopularOpinion that lyrics are the least important part of "rock music". Vocals are important, but bad lyrics can really kill something for me, no matter if the rest of it is good. I seem to recall Kurdt Kobain said he wrote his lyrics right before recording the songs and that he would be just as happy singing out of the phone book instead. I don’t believe him, but I take his point.

To evidence I submit: surf rock, songs with unintelligible lyrics, songs sung in languages I don’t speak.

The record starts with a mostly up-tempo first third, probably as up-tempo as this band would ever be, and some killer riffing is unleashed. The guitar parts in Remember Me will eat your ears alive if you blast them on a good quality set of speakers.

Then it moves into the more dreamlike, meditative middle third, where sometimes I feel almost like I'm listening to it underwater, but maybe that’s just the intro to Fear of Drowning, which - and this is not a coincidence - is one of my actual fears. I remember listening to this record with my dear friend Chris, and him noting that this album has a 'sense of dread' to it, which is a dead-on assessment.

The final third, peaking with the 13 minute extended ride of Lately, otherwise explores some slower numbers, which always evoke a sense of isolation to me. Of course, with this album, I cannot separate myself from single occupancy hotel rooms, 5 hour drives, tables for one and a sense of a summer wasted (and not in the good, Belle And Sebastian way), so that might just me projecting onto it?

Lately also first brought the phrase "the past is a foreign country" into my personal lexicon. And it made me realize that the Summer of 2005, which I was still yearning for, was just another country that I visited once. It was great but you can't go back, so you better make the most of it while you are there, before you end up spending the summer of 2006 by yourself in a literal foreign country.

It was at this point I had some conversations about not spending as much time working in Swansea. Which worked out for a while. Then there was a Swansea Phase Two about 12-18 months later. But that’s a whole other story. (Spoiler: it was better, there were other people.)

An unanswered question about this record - and it's been 15 years of wondering – is what genre is it? Indie, I guess, but that feels too generic. I don't know why that’s important.

I do think that British Sea Power's The Decline Of British Sea Power is a classic, as proclaimed by its album art. I’m always a sucker for self-aggrandizing but it really helps if you can back it up as well.

As much I like to listen to this album, I can never really listen to it without thinking about how Young Adulthood, much like an English Summer, is a precious commodity, too easily wasted. It feels like an endless expanse stretching out in front out of you, but it is over as almost as soon as it begins.

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• Album Rating, The Decline of British Sea Power: A-

• Life Rating, Summer 2005: A

• Life Rating, Summer 2006: C-