Brexit meant we just had to ditch ‘British’
When British Air Power changed their nametoBritish Sea Power soon after their formation in 2000, there was little in the way of blowback. But when they dropped the ‘British’ last year to sail on as simply Sea Power, the decision made many more waves.
The indie rock band released a statement in August saying they didn’t want to ‘run any risk of being confused with… an isolationist, antagonistic nationalism’. At the
Accused on social media of ‘succumbing to the woke agenda’
‘We vote on things. Sea Power is very much a functioning democracy’
time, they were accused on social media of ‘succumbing to the woke agenda’ and by contrast ‘pandering to the stupidity of others’.
It is evident that the controversy hasn’t hurt the commercial performance in the UK of their first album release in five years. At the time of writing, Everything Was Forever was set to enter the UK top five which would be the highest in their history.
Speaking to me this week, Yan Scott Wilkinson, who fronts the sextet with brother Neil, says that such factors as the fallout from Brexit influenced the decision to change their name.
‘It [Brexit] was the final straw and the thing that created enough impetus to make it worth the hassle of changing our name,’ he says. ‘We haven’t disowned anything
we’ve done as British Sea Power. But really, we wanted to simplify things.’ That could rarely be said of the sound of Sea Power at any stage of their career. Their live shows are unpredictable spectacles. A gig to promote their top 10 and later Mercury Prize-nominated album, Do You Like Rock Music? in Whelan’s in 2008 sticks in my memory. Several of the band crowd-surfed, another climbed to the balcony and a crew member ran through the crown dressed as a polar bear. ‘I can understand why a lot of people don’t get us,’ Yan says. ‘Particularly early on we almost had a slapstick element. It was almost like punk and Charlie Chaplin going at the same time. We would often have some quite chaotic ends to gigs, combined with visual jokes. Those things often don’t go together. You go through a stage of not really knowing what’s going on with the aim of getting to something more meaningful and emotional after that. Not always successfully, but we try.’
All eight of their studio albums since show variations in sound from intimate to a panoramic sweep. It’s not surprising that they’ve turned their hands to movie soundtracks.
They were chosen to provide music for the DVD release of the 1934 classic Man Of Aran. They won a video games industry Bafta for their work on Disco Elysium in 2019.
Everything Was Forever, Yan says is ‘a bit more personal and relatable.’
‘Maybe some people who have been following us a long time will find this less witty or clever,’ he adds.
‘I don’t know if it is just that we’re getting older or different experiences this last couple of years. For various reasons I’ve been a bit more sensitive and emotional.’
Yan and Neil lost both their father and mother in successive years since the release of their album 2017 Let the Dancers Inherit The Party.
‘My mother had dementia for years, so there was an ongoing expectation, but it didn’t make it any less painful for me or Neil when she passed away,’ Yan says.
That the sextet, who were rarely in the same room in the last few years, have made a gem of an album is a considerable achievement. Yan puts this down to knowing each other so well that, even when working over Zoom, they knew where everybody was coming from, ‘We vote on things. Sea Power is very much a functioning democracy’.
■ Sea Power’s Everything Was Forever is out now.