Reviews

"Alcohol and duct tape are my two favorite things," announced guitarist Martin Noble during British Sea Power's gig at the Loft on Friday.

The declaration shouldn't have been as telling as it was. The brainy Brighton, England, quartet's 70-minute set in front of a mostly devotional crowd of about 80 appeared patched together at times, and some members (including touring add-ons Abi Fry on viola and Phil Sumner on keys and cornet) frequently looked like they'd rather be tying one on than turning this music out.

For a band that's been declared this generation's closest facsimile of Joy Division (albeit with a more rock-orchestral drive and a mischevious and largely sober persona), excusing that kind of detachment here in America isn't hard to justify. British Sea Power is a mega-candlepower lighthouse at home, where its reputation for spontaneous and sometimes oddly sited live performances and imaginative Brit-rock song arrangements are appreciated by thousands.

Its two-month-old third full-length album, Do You Like Rock Music?, is one of this year's sweeping masterpieces of the genre.

But save for a few grandiose and moving song denouements ("True Adventures," "Canvey Island" and "Waving Flags," during which Ms. Fry's fills were washed out by the crowd singing along), British Sea Power mimiced subpar countrymen more often than not. Only during its customary set-wrapping punk-prog jam "Carrion" did Mr. Noble embark on an amp-scaling expedition and gangly singer-bassist Neil Wilkinson attempt to become more intimate with the Loft's low-slung disco balls via a crowd-surfing adventure.

The set's sonic unevenness reinforced the relative conservativism. Singer-guitarist Scott Wilkinson barely broke a sweat, not bothering beyond contractual obligation since his voice was mixed too low. And Ms. Fry's viola may as well have been M.I.A. Quieter interludes such as the start of "Great Skua" and "Down on the Ground," the latter of which is the new CD's catchiest track, threatened to fall apart before the inertia of the thicker, louder passages that followed saved them.

British Sea Power isn't the intelligently chiseled and milled Brit band that many critics make it out to be; it wears a sound held together by duct tape as often as not. Luckily, that stuff sticks to almost anything – even tiny American audiences.

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