What with a busy Autumn of touring ahead of them, British Sea Power know how to keep busy on the road. And so it is that they’ve issued one of their frequent and enjoyable suggested reading lists, which can be found at the bottom of this News.
The band have also contributed to excellent fishing-and-assorted-ephemera blog Caught By The River, wherein they muse upon their favoured Walsh Shoes of Bolton, Thoreau’s Walden, Kraftwerk and the films of Jean Painlevé. Visit the British Sea Power website for full tour details, including the Nick Sanderson tribute concert at the Kentish Town Forum on October 27th. And while you’re at it, watch the Quietus’ British Sea Power documentary from the Natural History Museum down below.
British Sea Power’s recommended reads:
Young Stalin
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
An astonishing read from the charismatically surly toff historian. Learn about the young Josef’s many amorous indiscretions. And a penchant for writing for poems to ice masses that parallels BSP’s own Oh Larsen B: “Sing a lullaby to the glacier/Strung down from the heavens/Know for certain that once/Struck down to the ground, an oppressed man/Strives again to reach the pure mountain.”
Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music
By Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor
This book on the tricky question of authenticity in music is great for starting vicious ale-house spats. Featuring stuff on Leadbelly, Kraftwerk, Donna Summers, Neil Young and the Sex Pistols, it looks at how the most wood-beamed of ‘real’ music was sometimes manicured almost as determinedly as Girls Aloud.
British Sea Power’s musical recommendation:
Cockney Rejects – Greatest Hits Vol II
While anticipating the mere arriviste yob brutalism of BSP’s ‘No Lucifer’, why not warm up with the real thing? ‘War On the Terraces’ and ‘The Greatest Cockney Rip Off’ will warm you through like best Bovril. Fans of authentic heritage rock will also enjoy a skilful reworking of The Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’ – sounding like a paddock of maltreated bullocks who’ve just ingested several gallons of Sunny D and a copy of Burt Weedon’s Play In A Day.
British Sea Power at the Natural History Museum:
