Sea Power - Everything Was Forever

Trying to pin down Sea Power has always been an exercise in futility. Even now that they’ve dropped both the ‘British’ and their on-stage dancing bear, ‘Everything Was Forever’ shows the group have lost none of their ambition or quirk. The U2-aping pomp of later albums has been stripped back to their own brand of epic that made albums like ‘Open Season’ so special: reflective, rousing, and morbidly fun. Admittedly, things don’t get off to the best start, opener ‘Scaring At The Sky’ being a largely forgettable, somewhat lethargic ballad. But fortunes quickly change as the stomping drums of ‘Transmitter’ lead into the oddly beautiful ‘Two Fingers’. ‘Fire Escape In The Sea’ builds the luscious ‘Whirling- In-Rags’ from their BAFTA-winning ‘Disco Elysium’ game soundtrack out into a fully-fledged pop song. A moment of contemplation that makes the perfect companion to the later ‘Lakeland Echo’. ‘Folly’, on the other hand, feels like a late-era New Order belter; dark, rumbling, embracing pessimism. “And when the end is near / Bummed out, you just don’t care”, they sing. For a band already well-versed in dramatic tunes about ice shelves and floods, it feels like the ultimate “oh well, might as well dance through the apocalypse” moment. A new, refreshed Sea Power with a creative mind still firing on all cylinders. It might not feel as fresh and exciting as ‘The Decline Of…’, and we know the Sea Power formula well by now, but their trademark pop-rock melodies still have the power to exhilarate. British Sea Power is dead. Long live Sea Power.