Open Season

It is difficult to think of a more adventurously spirited band than British Sea Power. Like Boy Scouts trapped in the bodies of twentysomething men, they sing about about Cumbrian hill-walking and ornithology, dress in tin hats and knotted handkerchiefs, and play gigs behind foliage, fauna and stuffed owls.

Given their yearning for the bygone days of Boy's Own annuals and bayonets, it is not surprising that this strangeness has almost engulfed their sound. Which is a shame, because the follow-up to The Decline of British Sea Power (2003) is an album that has grace and gusto by the earful. Mapping a course between Echo and the Bunnymen and the Strokes, the single It Ended on an Oily Stage layers lustrous guitars to reverb-laden, emotion-drenched singing, while Be Gone navigates cliché with twittering birdsong, and To Get To Sleep is set to epic beats that directly recall Phil Spector's teenage symphonies.

Open Season is an album of sonic gusts that can seem rather relentless. Still, it's impossible not to admire a band that has not only written a love song to "the foremost of all the collapsing Antarctic ice shelves, Larsen B", but sings it with the courageous words: "Oh, Larsen B, you can fall on me/ Desalinate the barren sea."

4/5