From left to right: Eamon, Yan, Woods, Hamilton, Noble
"That's what you should write, as the headline. 'Give British Sea Power a break.' British Sea Power's frontman Yan has just fixed me with a stern look and given advice on how SUPERSWEET should title this article.
We're sitting the top deck of the band's tourbus parked in a hot and dusty Kings Cross, and, to be honest, the band look knackered. Their second album 'Open Season' has been lauded by critics in the UK and beyond, and British Sea Power are in constant demand for gigs of every shape and size, be it this summer's festival season, one-offs for their fans in special venues, or tonight's Budweiser sponsored showcase.
But tonight, the band seem tired, really tired. They've been existing in the plastic and metal shell of this tourbus and others for days and weeks now, and there's really no end in sight to the transitory, artificial life of touring as 2005 goes on. Although all bands suffer from the rigours of life on the road, you can see why it affects British Sea Power. Unlike so many of their contemporaries, they didn't form a band for the girls, drugs or parties, but to convey their singular aesthetic through crafted, elegiac melodies directed towards an ice shelf 'Larsen B', the English coastline 'Fear Of Drowning', embracing subject matter that the current crop of intelligence-shy guitar bands would fear to touch. So all the trauma of industry-enforced life on the road can become an endurance slog. "I've been waking up in sweats in the middle of nightmares, thinking that the bus is some kind of coffin and we're buried alive," says bassist Hamilton. "I've been banging on the walls going GET ME OUT OF HERE. In the middle of the night there's always someone going 'help me, it's dark down here'"
Yan has been suffering too. "I had it when we got home the other day. I woke up and didn't know where I was, and just started screaming," he tells me, believing that tour bus life doesn't help. "When you're in that close proximity, all the psychotic sides of everyone do start to come out. I wasn't particularly pleasant."
"We nearly had a return of the cold brown bottle," says guitarist Noble. "No we didn't," insists Yan. "It's not even the brown bottle. It's just what you call… Is that the madness? The madness. But how do they escape it, get away from it all? Yan likes to "stay at home, go out walking," while Noble's "got a little garden at home. I'm looking forward to spending some time with it. I've got to lay down some grass, because it's a bit patchy at the moment."
They're very guarded about what shaped 'Open Season'. I was initially unsure about the record, feeling that British Sea Power had strayed from the more expansive, almost more experimental and instrumental moods suggested by their live shows in the year or so before 'Open Season' came out. How did it end up so different, more melodic, and arguably more commercially and radio friendly?
"It was going to be more like that, until," says Yan, and gestures around the bus, "all this took over." I ask how much of it was pressure, how much of the weariness of touring and the industry has shaped their work. British Sea Power insist that if we want to see that, then that's fine. It's that 'we've written the songs, we play them how we o, and now they're out there, make of them what they will' defence mechanism bands employ in times of strife.
Did you enjoy recording it? I ask. Not really, they say with looks of resignation, though the writing and pre-recording in Hamilton's basement and "the barn" was apparently more enjoyable. Do they feel like they've been dragged along by it all? "By a cart, and a horse, dragged along some bumpy road," says Yan wryly. But do you feel like you're inside the cart, or out the back with arms tied with rope?
"It's always been just taking our chances, and taking what comes along," says Noble. "I look at other bands where it's got really big really quickly, and I can't imagine what that must be like." Do you feel it's been better for you to take it gradually? "There was never really meant to be a second album was there?" Yan muses. I'm a bit taken aback by this revelation, but British Sea Power refuse to expand upon this comment, so I ask them what they would do if they quit it all now?
"I'd become a homeless and live in a wood," says Yan. "Just forage for food. I really would do it, you know. Whereabouts? I'd wander. Wander from wood to wood." Like the tradition of the tramp, I ask? Not destitute people forced into a life on the streets in big cities through failings in society and tragedy in their own lives, but those who chose the wandering way through their own volition. There was one who lived just outside the town where I grew up, I tell British Sea Power, who wandered around with a rat on his shoulder. But then he died, and the tradition died with him. "It's a tradition that needs bringing back," someone says. Hamilton decides to tell us a story. "In Arundell there was this little enclave where one lived. I used to go walking there, and there was a sign that said 'Pogle's Wood'. And you'd walk five minutes past there, and there's a sign that says 'Fuck off'. And then twenty feet further on there's another sign that says 'fuck off' and then a third that says 'have you fucked off yet? I'll beat you up' or something, and you walk a bit further and you get to a circle with this massive pile of rubbish, and this fellow wandering around all arrr arrr with a can of Tennants. That's Pogle."
"It's our natural evolution to go towards that," says Yan. "Waving cans of Tennants and bones and shouting fuck off."
Words: Luke Turner
Photography: Kriangkrai Srithongthai