1:24 PM: Free Album Week, Day Two: British Sea Power - Open Season



Since British Sea Power' press release for Open Season sells the album much better than I ever could, I'll just let you read what they have to say about it.

*From the Press Release for Open Season*

They say that you see great things from the valley, and small things from the peak. We feel confident that this record will bring you both perspectives.

The majority of the album was recorded by Mads Bjerke (Spiritualized, 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).

British Sea Power's debut album, The Decline Of British Sea Power, was released in 2003. To date it has sold 50,303* copies in Great Britain and a little over 200,000 worldwide. In a universe where Saturn lies 746,000,000 miles distant and the nice young men in Maroon 5 can sell 6.5 million CDs, these are maybe not astronomical figures. However, please bear with us. We would like you to entertain the possibility that British Sea Power have sown the wind and are about to reap the whirlwind.

Over the past two years, British Sea Power have toured the world with a series of excellent groups including The Flaming Lips, The Strokes, Interpol, Pulp, The Killers, The Duke Spirit and The Copper Family. Over the same period, British Sea Power's debut album has been acclaimed by a varied set that includes David Bowie, Bill Oddie, Radiohead, Jeremy Vine, Lou Reed, Ludovic Kennedy, REM, Ian Rankin, Julian Cope, Jon Savage, Daniel Radcliffe and Damien Hirst.

Perhaps this endeavour will now bring its reward. Perhaps British Sea Power have made an album that lies exactly midway between Julian Casablancas and Julian Cope - an album with both lustrous pop thrill and ambitious, intelligent rock scale. An album where they sing of girls and guillotines, love and Larsen B, the foremost of all the collapsing Antarctic ice shelves. Perhaps British Sea Power have done all of this.

It's Open Season and maybe anything is possible.

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 Go to Sleep
8. Victorian Ice
9. Oh Larsen B
10. The Land Beyond
11. True Adventures

If you can't get enough BSP, check out the fourteen minute epic that launched the band into indie God status in Britian, 2003's "Lately," from The Decline of British Sea Power.

Lately

For those of you not familiar with Richard's blog, Yab Yum Callosum, today is the perfect day to check it out. He's posted a wonderful mix, complete with mp3s, many of which you'll have a lot of trouble finding anywhere else on the internet. Great post idea by the way, Richard, I'm going to have to steal it and post a mix of my own here in the near future.