British Sea Power

Man of Aran

(Rough Trade)

Record Review by Kevan Peterson

The title track on Man of Aran opens the album with what sounds like lapping waves softly tossed underneath a melodic piano, conjuring up a feeling of cinematic worthiness.  This is fitting, given the album doubles as a soundtrack to the documentary by the same name.  The title track comes in at over three minutes, which will carry people into the sea of tranquility that British Sea Power hopes to drift you into like a strong undertow.  If you find this expansive music a bit too salty to swallow, you may find yourself land locked firmly on shore as a non-believer.

If loose melodies and displaced instruments aren’t your thing, then the second track, “The South Sound,” may just drown you in its vast pool of slow builds and watered down harmonies.  If you are looking for an album to calm your nerves or accompany a long bath, then you may have hit the pirate’s booty with this one.  Halfway through “The South Sound,” the track builds, leading the listener into what sounds briefly like a frenzy after a long ten minutes of lapping notes, but this only lasts momentarily and is comparatively subtle to any standard rock music. 

It is not until the third track, “Come Wander With Me,” that the album receives its first injection of vocals.  It’s a short lived, almost passing fad, as the band dives quickly back into the instrumentation that makes the album so unique.  Drift a little further down stream and you’ll find yourself at “The Currach,” which uses an up tempo to heighten the mood without going to high passed, well, sea level.

Most of the album hovers on the edge of dreamy interplays between sonic splashes of sound and cohesive scores.  If you have even a small imagination, Man of Aran can drift you off into a dreamland with any one of its twelve tracks and, much like the sea, it’s open, uncertain and ventures into uncharted territory. 

But where most of the album puts you in a quiet slumber, “Spearing the Sunfish” casts you into the middle of a nightmarish storm.  Utilizing electric chaos, the track can make you feel anxious and calm all at the same time, which can be quite unsettling after almost twelve minutes.  British Sea Power quickly return to their calming ways and even call back earlier melodies on the track “Woman of Aran,” which, given its title plays as a companion piece to “Man of Aran.” 

The album closes on a slow build with “No Man is an Archipelago,” which, for those of us without a dictionary for a brain, means a chain or cluster of islands.  But for what it's worth, this album may be an archipelago, as it consists of many small formations of sound, clustered together to create something solid and larger than any given track.  And it’s an island well worth the price of admission if you want to get away and relax for awhile.