Yes, I Like Rock Music

One of my close friends is a guy called Ged Gray. Born, bred, and still living in Manchester, England. He is—in my eyes—what the great, mad Englishman should be. Decked in his collared Fred Perry and flashing two fingers, he’s a soccer fanatic who works at BBC radio and is an unrepentant, albeit aging, punk rocker. He knows more than a thing or two about music and he takes it maybe as seriously as I do. There’s one band that makes him—as he might say—completely mental.

British Sea Power plays the Tralf on May 17

It’s British Sea Power.

Fittingly hailing from the English seaside town of Brighton, British Sea Power are one of the beacons of Blighty’s current music landscape. With lyrics that reveal a keen if skewered taste for literature and history matched by explosive, infectious melodic sense, BSP are the children of Echo and the Bunnymen’s fevered art rock as anthem bombast, the Smiths’ bookish bedsit pop, and the spiritual, epic nature that marked the post-punk power of Joy Division. With deliciously offbeat sensibilities matched with undeniable knack for melodicism and songcraft, British Sea Power have it all. And their live set is something, too, as I will explain.

Following the band’s 2003 wily and perfectly jagged debut The Decline of British Sea Power and the sweepingly intricate constructions of 2005’s Open Season—complete with a ballad about an ice cap, “Oh Larsen B”—2008 saw the quartet issue Do You Like Rock Music?, a title query that at first seems simple almost to the point of ridiculousness but one that BSP will force you to answer. They forced me.

As the night crept past on March 15, 2008—the so-called Ides of March that Shakespeare fans like British Sea Power know to be wary of—my body was ready to shut down. It was the final show on the last night of the annual SXSW music festival in Austin. Following a week of nonstop loud music, fast living, and marginal sleep, I was on the verge of collapse. My eyes had become perma-coated by a hazy blur and my ankles felt like amputation was the only answer. Full-on fatigue was setting in and alcohol poisoning was not out of the question.

At one in the morning on a rooftop venue at Austin’s Maggie Maes on Sixth Street, my body was just moments from revolt. Then British Sea Power took the stage. There was Ged, indeed going completely mental in the front row.

Ripping through an impossibly energetic, anarchic, and inspiring set, British Sea Power proved that such mentalness was due as they blasted a charged shot of aural adrenaline that forced my sagging frame into pogo motion. Bass/guitar/vocal duties were frenetically swapped by Yan and Hamilton in a set that ripped through many of Do You Like’s finest moments, including “No Lucifer,” “Canvey Island,” and “Waving Flags.” It all culminated in a free-for-all, guitarist Noble climbing atop the speaker stacks striking chords with complete abandon.

I had been ready to fall over and die, but now, buzzing with excitement, I was ready for that fabled “just one more beer.”

Was it one of the most memorable shows of SXSW? Hell, it was one of the most memorable shows I’ve ever seen. Rock music as British Sea Power does it? Yes, I like it a lot.

British Sea Power play this Saturday, May 17, with special guests the Rosebuds and Jeffrey Lewis. Tralf Music Hall, 622 Main Street (852-2860, tralfmusichall.com). $12 presale, $15 at the door.