British Sea Power's "Atom"

I feel like over the last year or two I've become a lot more picky about the kind of music I buy. Buzz bands come and go and for whatever reason I just can't seem to tell this month's Cold War Kids from last month's Tapes 'n' Tapes. The creation of billions of blogs just like this one all over the world has created an entirely new way of introducing people to new sounds, but while this is all very well, I can't help but be a little overwhelmed by choice sometimes.

Still, every once in a while all the webcrawling pays off and you come across a band like British Sea Power. I learned about these four uber-literate rockers from Brighton, UK on the AtEase (a Radiohead fansite) message board when I was still in high school. The band's 2003 debut, The Decline of British Sea Power is one of the essential recordings of the decade (the aughts?), featuring a range of material from yelping post-punk ("Apologies to Insect Life") to anthemic histori-pop ("Carrion") that's glued together by a rich helping of effervescent guitar squall and warehouse-rave drumming culminating in a collosal 13-minute requiem for a by-gone era called "Lately."

In 2005 the band released Open Season, which pruned back the textures of the debut, but compensated by delivering up a perfect set of guitar pop in the tradition of bands like Echo & the Bunnymen and The Sound. Some of the standout tracks included "It Ended on an Oily Stage" (one of the best opening tracks I've heard in some time, with lyrics like "All across the eastern board / Languages were being lost / You look so elegantly bored now / Totally at ease with it all") and the single "Please Stand Up," which features a chorus hook that could make Bono weep.

As this year comes to a close, the band has released an online EP (which I believe comes out on CD in stores this November) entitled Krankenhaus?. It features the driving "Atom," which hearkens back to some of their earlier songs. You can download the song for free on British Sea Power's website, linked here.

I'm going to see the band play at Maxwell's in Hoboken tomorrow night, and I'm superexcited. Will be sure to report.

Tracklist for Krankenhaus? EP
1. Atom (4:40)
2. Down on the Ground (4:31)
3. Straight Down the Line (4:06)
4. Hearing Aid (1:56)
5. The Pelican (9:18)