Sea-ing Is Believing

If there was any doubt about quirk rockers British Sea Power reveling in the bizarre, it’s pretty well shot to shit when I attempt to call up frontman Yan, AKA Scott Wilkinson.

Expecting to hear a bashful Brighton croak, I’m treated to a jarring, otherworldly howl – the noise I imagine a whale makes as it’s harpooned to death by an unscrupulous hunter with shifty eyebrows. When I finally speak to Wilkinson, he tells me the Godawful holler is the result of a botched attempt to set an air raid siren as his ringtone. Were I calling almost any other band, the prospect of a haunted phone line might have put me off somewhat. But you can’t blame me for being keen to pick British Sea Power’s collective brains. The Irish haven’t seen hide nor hair of the salty sea dogs since they last dropped anchor here in 2008, despite the fact that the wily sixsome spent the best part of a year obsessing over a 1934 documentary set on the Aran Islands.
Robert J. Flaherty’s Man Of Aran got itself a brand new bag in 2009, when the British Film Institute asked the BSP to compose a new soundtrack for the film.
“It was just going to be a one-off thing,” Wilkinson recalls, “it was just an experiment. But we thought it worked pretty well. I was a fan of the film, I thought it was beautiful, the photography… it’s really striking, you know, and quite funny at times, but the music on it – I couldn’t take it seriously! It made me think Robin Hood was gonna come around the corner or something. That’s why we thought we would improve it a bit, or at least start things off better for people who might enjoy it.”
Releasing a soundtrack to a 75-year-old partly-staged “documentary” was a rather surprising move for the pensive indie rockers, who had already been dubbed the best band in Britain and were sitting pretty on a Mercury nomination for the critically-adored Do You Like Rock Music? Wilkinson informs me that it wasn’t the first movie they’d attempted to score.
“We tried all sorts of things, but it’s actually very hard to find a film where you can take all the sound off it. The people who made Winged Migration offered us all this uncut footage, but then it just ended up being more and more birds flying! You tend to want some information, some sort of MC!”
Luckily, the frontman had little-to-no geese to worry about when it came to writing fifth studio album Valhalla Dancehall – a whirlwind trip (and I use that word sincerely) through more sinister waters.
First things first, where is the Valhalla Dancehall?
“It’s a sort of mythical place that was big enough to fit all the songs in! It’s in between Valhalla – where the Kings go after they’ve died in battle – and a Jamaican disco. It’s what we wished the album sounded like, I know it doesn’t really sound like that but, hey!”
The 13-tracker has been 18 months in the making, some of which involved Wilkinson working all on his lonesome in the BSP studio in the uber quiet South Downs area of Blighty.
“There were times when I was there on my own for three weeks and I didn’t speak to a single person. I started talking to myself, I don’t mind admitting that. I found it quite nice. I’d say, ‘Shall we have a cup of tea?’ I was in my element really, just doing music on my own, but it might be a bit dangerous if you had nothing to get on with!”
While Valhalla Hall isn’t exactly short on eerie intensity, a couple of tracks, most notably peppy single ‘Living Is So Easy’, sees BSP in more cheerful form.
“There was definitely nothing to be afraid of on this one,” Wilkinson recalls. “I like pop music and all that and I think after experimenting for a long time and having a lot of fun and amusing myself and following my own whim, I kind of missed just writing nice songs. There’s songs on there where no one will ever hear all the weird things that are going on, but I like the simple songs too.”
BSP have been known to put on an oddball gig or two (on a normal day, they drape the stage with assorted foliage), but the past year has seen them outdo themselves in the kitsch stakes. They’ve blasted the tunes on the great wall of China, in the Arctic Circle (“I was quite interested to see what 24 hour sunlight was like.” And? “It was alright.”) and on countless islands around the UK. A film festival in Jersey even invited them to sleep in a zero-facilities round tower overlooking the ocean during their stopover.
“It was a brilliant building but I think we would have swapped it for a Travel Lodge half way through the night!” Wilkinson laughs. “If I was making a video, I’d definitely go there, but not if I wanted a cup of tea. But it was a nice thought. They must have said; ‘We’ve got these eccentric British Sea Power types coming, what’ll we do with them?’”