While DYLRM? lacks the wild-eyed spits and howls of Decline Of British Sea Power, it's definitely BSP's most rocking effort yet, replacing the sterility that plagued its sophomore slump, Open Season, with stadium-sized bravado.
Do You Like Rock Music? is BSP’s most consistent, ambitious and downright marvelous album to date. It combines the raw edginess of their debut with the more polished production of Open Season. What we have here is, already, a contender for album of the year.
Rock Music goes further, showcasing a fully mature band turning out immense tracks that combine the best elements from their previous works.
DYLRM should be a mess, but the band has crafted a wintry, nuanced, and bold collection of epic songs that integrate the sweeping theatricality of Arcade Fire-era indie rock without all of the insularity.
You can almost feel the wind and rain outside, and this adds to the mixture of melancholia and euphoria throughout, the latter realised most obviously on Waving Flags. And that's the spirit that runs through this fine album, staying with the listener long after the final stanzas of We Close Our Eyes bring it full circle.
Yan and Hamilton manage to capture old clichés in new ways and that, filtered through their weirdness and idiosyncrasies, the sentiments seem new (or at least more original).
Do You Like Rock Music? doesn't fail miserably-- which at least might have been more interesting-- but disappoints gently.
While partially removed from the overly backwards-looking lyrics of yore …Rock Music? still captures that intangible essence of something lost and, as such, remains wholly affecting.
A vivid, nostalgic traipse into what good rock bands ought to sound like.
Do You Like Rock Music? is the glorious sound of a unique band going for broke.
For all the strength of the variously loud and soft moments throughout Do You Like Rock Music?, the record is at its best when the band attempts to holistically integrate the two.
‘Do You Like Rock Music?’ might be fashionably rough around all the right edges, but there’s definitely still enough lyrical wit and musical beauty contained herein to warrant your attention. And, at times, your adoration.
With guitars that ring and roar and percussion that gushes and thunders, they finally turn their lyrical peculiarities into a legitimate churn of ideas, rather than a posturing diversion.
British Sea Power are still without a “Wake Up” or a “Float On” but Do You Like Rock Music? is exhilarating in its ambition, full of songs that will warm the cockles at whichever National Heritage site they choose to play next.
The greatest fault of Do You Like Rock Music? is that it is a statement album without a statement, only a response.
This is exactly what I was hoping for when starting Sea Power's discography. It sounds like the coast, it keeps energy throughout and never drags and is all round their strongest output so far. Between releasing Open Season and this the keyboards player was replaced and had gained their sixth member. With the full roster that has since never changed, they released this incredible hour long rock project which was both their most ambitious and enjoyable at the time.
The album sounds incredible. ... read more
I fuckkin love rock music.
But in all seriousness this is a brilliant album. A sweeping and strange sort of epic, spanning abstracted and cryptic tales of politics, history, heartbreak and soul. And for all the touting of it being a Stadium Rock album (don't get me started) it has something those other comparable groups don't. It has grit. Dirt. It's a weathered flag of an album that carries with it some incredible weight of drama and history. It reduces me to ... read more
1 | All in It 2:12 | |
2 | Lights Out for Darker Skies 6:37 | |
3 | No Lucifer 3:27 | |
4 | Waving Flags 4:08 | |
5 | Canvey Island 3:41 | |
6 | Down on the Ground 4:24 | |
7 | A Trip Out 3:17 | |
8 | The Great Skua 4:35 | |
9 | Atom 5:39 | |
10 | No Need to Cry 3:43 | |
11 | Open the Door 4:57 | |
12 | We Close Our Eyes 8:05 |
#13 | / | Beats Per Minute |
#14 | / | MOJO |
#18 | / | Q Magazine |
#25 | / | Treble |
#28 | / | musicOMH |
#28 | / | NME |
#38 | / | The Guardian |
#43 | / | Drowned in Sound |