Album Review: Sea Power - Everything Was Forever

Materialising during the darkest days of landfill indie, British Sea Power were always too esoterically bonkers to slot comfortably alongside Pete Doherty, Kaiser Chiefs and pals. But their long, strange journey seemed to hit choppy waters a few years ago as social media made it impossible for even an intellectual indie-band to employ nuance and scorched-earth wit in fulfilment of their duties.

In other words, the “British” part of their name was suddenly problematic. Not an issue, said the group, who have rebranded themselves “Sea Power “and returned with one of their strongest albums ever. It’s British Sea Power only with a shorter moniker and songs that brim with heartache, quiet wonder and choruses that detonate like tear-filled fireworks.

It’s a record full of life even as it contemplates death. In the past several years, sibling songwriters, Yan Scott Wilkinson and Neil Hamilton Wilkinson, lost both their parents. And, if Everything Was Forever isn’t straightforwardly about grief, it is tinged with introspection – and the understanding that, when a loved one dies, you become a different person. That is spelled out in opener ‘Scaring at the Sky’, an indie ballad brimming with midlife melancholia.

Some wonderful ironies are folded in. Sea Power may have adjusted their name – yet have never sounded more like their old selves than on ‘Transmitter’ and ‘Two Fingers’, which repurpose the romping angst of classics ‘Remember Me’ and ‘Larsen B’.

And yet, it’s the bone weariness that stays with you, as the album winds down with ‘Green Goddess’, in which Neil Wilkinson plunges into a fever-dream of half-remembered recollections from his Lake District childhood. It’s a reminder all things must pass – but proof, as well, that Sea Power are a long way from over.

Rating: 8/10

Key Track: ‘Transmitter’

Everything Was Forever from Sea Power is out now via Rough Trade and available to purchase here.