With their dapper dress sense and playfully nostalgic manifesto, British Sea Power have stormed the style mags and colour supplements over the past few years. But record sales have never quite matched their media appeal, leaving you to wonder whether the arty Brighton-based rockers are doomed to be lauded by the critics but neglected by the public.
This rammed venue and robust performance suggest otherwise. Debut album The Decline of British Sea Power can feel a little distant, but their live sound is heartier, more bass-heavy and twice as arresting.
There's a disappointing lack of new songs but current single A Lovely Day Tomorrow is an uplifting and gorgeous taster. Of the older material, Remember Me is choppy and urgent, and Men Together Today sees occasional fifth member Eamon desert his keyboards and high-step his way around the stage, a military drum tethered to his waist, while singer Yan stares glassy-eyed, clutching his mic stand like a wizard's staff.
This visual sense has always set British Sea Power apart. While the mock-formal language and artistic references (including Primo Levi, George Orwell and Ian Hamilton Finlay) of their promotional literature suggest a band that may be too clever to lower themselves to the actual business of entertainment, when performing they are wise enough to leave the philosophising at home and concentrate whole-heartedly on sound and spectacle.
As is their wont, vegetation litters the stage and plastic animals perch serenely on speakers, while choirs and birdsong fill the space between songs - at one point, the audience starts trilling back. The gig ends with a heroically overextended version of Lately, Eamon marching his way through a bemused audience, his drum raised above his head. Yan exits with a leap into the crowd, slipping slowly into a mass of heads and hands until only one defiant and oddly still finger is visible.
· British Sea Power play Manchester University (0161832 1111) tomorrow and the Academy, Birmingham (0870 771 2000), on Friday. Then touring.
