First Avenue presents British Sea Power (at The Cedar)

British Sea Power shows their true class (and that they continue to be in anything but decline) by paying a visit to The Cedar, in this show presented by First Avenue.  BSP’s inventive live shows have become a latterday rock institution. Atop the Great Wall Of China. At London’s Natural History Museum and Czech Embassy. On the Scilly Isles and on Arctic islets. Down a Cornish slate mine and at the Chelsea Flower Show. On ships at sea and deep in Polish forests. BSP have been acknowledged by the great institutions: David Bowie, the National Maritime Museum, Jarvis Cocker, the British Horseracing Authority. They are a band who tour giant American stadiums with old pals The Killers, but a band who also make singles with ancient West Country hitmakers The Wurzels. BSP are a band who play forests and giant rock halls as specially requested guests of The Flaming Lips, The Strokes and Pulp. But they’re also a band who stage their album launch parties in remote Sussex pubs where their own special guests are The Copper Family, a clan of Sussex folk singers who’ve been going for 200 years. And now The Cedar. No other band did this. Most likely no other band could.

BSP is touring in support of their fourth studio album, Valhalla Dancehall. It was written and recorded on Skye and in a remote farmhouse, near Selmeston in East Sussex. The title hints at some wild internationalist daydream – a mix of glowery Norse mythos and jam-happy Jamaican discos. Behold as Thor gets it on with Lady Saw. Of course, a pale alternative-rock band is never likely to be mistaken for such dancehall greats as Captain Sinbad and Sister Nancy. But you can dream. The album has a glorious scope, moving from the windswept nine-minute meditation of Once More Now to the neat electronic pop of Living Is So Easy. Recordings were made during Britain’s coldest winter for 30 years. There was snow and black ice and the fuel oil ran out at the band’s farmhouse studio. One night co-producer Graham Sutton’s car ran into a snowdrift 20 miles to the north. He had to kip down in his vehicle until morning.

While recording at the farmhouse, BSP made their own nine-hole golf course and enjoyed wine, beer and spirits in a The Yew Tree, a lovely pub in nearby Ripe. It was at this pub that the novelist Malcolm Lowry had a drink before walking home to his death, an uncertain event involving a matrimonial tiff, a bottle of gin and some sleeping pills. Lowry is buried in Ripe churchyard. Unfortunately, his grave doesn’t feature the epitaph he’d written years earlier: “Malcolm Lowry/Late of the Bowery/His prose was flowery/And often glowery/He live nightly and drank daily/And died playing the ukulele.” Meanwhile, up on Skye, between recording 50 tracks of ‘porpoise noises’, singer/bassist Hamilton found himself helping a sheep give birth on a remote Skye hillside. The lamb was breached but the BSP man got it out. Sadly, the lamb died the next day, but the sheep survived and the farmer relayed his thanks. This impromptu animal husbandry gives a flavour of the remoteness and simplicity of Hamilton and Abi’s island hut. Of course, a recording schedule that reaches between Skye and Sussex isn’t the most convenient. Abi has now pretty much mastered the art of driving the length of the United Kingdom at a single stretch.

Despite this colourful recording backdrop, some substantial compositional ambition and lyrics that move from “interstellar clouds on the Sussex Downs” to visible panty lines, Valhalla Dancehall is also often a very direct album. A case in point is the track Who’s In Control? It’s a song that mentions local libraries and recommends militancy over militarism. But it’s also a song that blasts in on a glam stomp and a glorious guitar riff, while voicing 21st century anxieties in plainspoken language. Similarly, the song Living Is So Easy mentions the Parisian banlieue and the Dame Vera Lynn Celebrity Clay Pigeon shoot (a real-life Sussex event that has featured Bernard Cribbins and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa). But it’s a chimingly direct song, centring on desire and some vast universal party. You can almost imagine Lady Gaga singing it, a sure sign of premium pop quality. Indeed, beside the atmospheric, reflective Hamilton songs Baby, Cleaning Out The Rooms and Once More Now – tracks that form a link to the Man Of Aran album – Valhalla Dancehall can be seen as a bit of pop fantasia. The band like to imagine there are hints of Kraftwerk, Abba, Winfred Atwell and Slade. All lined up beside an all-new Norse/Kingston pantheon and a mood of sweet, intoxicating sparkling wine.

Italian/Canadian band A Classic Education opens.

Ticket options and info

• On sale date: now
• Phone: 612-338-2674 ext 2 ($1 fee per ticket)
• In person: From a Cedar volunteer in the front lobby before and after shows (no fee), Electric Fetus (small fee), and First Ave and their outlets
• Online: Ticketmaster (fees apply) (click on red Buy Tickets button at top of this page)
• All Cedar shows are all ages.

British Sea Power

British Sea Power are a six-piece band variously originating from Cumbria, Yorkshire, Ealing and Shropshire and who are currently based in East Sussex and on the Isle Of Skye. Members include Yan Scott Wilkinson (vocals/guitar), Neil Hamilton Wilkinson (...

A Classic Education

A Classic Education are from Bologna, Italy. Part Canadian, part Italian, the band has been going since 2007. Much has happened since then. Band members include Canadian singer and guitarist Jonathan Clancy and his Italian mates Luca Mazzieri. Paul Pieretto,...