Music Arcades: British Sea Power: The Decline of British Sea Power

This takes me right back to 2003. Mainly because I've barely, if ever, listened to it since then. Like Aberfeldy, British Sea Power are the kind of band I would never have come across were it not for 6 Music. There were a clutch of acts that, having been adopted by the station as emblematic of what they were "about", came to have a symbiotic relationship with the station.

At least that's how it felt to me. The Decline of British Sea Power was one of the albums I spotted in Lucy's collection shortly after we started going out. She's a Radio 4 girl and doesn't listen to digital radio to this day, so it wasn't 6 Music that led her to BSP. I popped downstairs yesterday evening to ask how she had come across them. She was watching The Apprentice: You're Fired, so I got short shrift. Basically, she can't remember. In fact, when pressed (to the point of distraction), she admitted she couldn't really remember whether she liked them or not. I get the feeling she hasn't listened to the album much since 2003 either.

But my hunch is that she might like the album more than I do. After all, she went to the Reading Festival that year. Yeah, rock chick. And BSP are much more rock than Aberfeldy's tuneful adult pop.

When I listened on my computer, I wasn't much taken with the music: it came on like that the generic 6 Music indie rock which I got so practiced at tuning out mentally that in the end I tuned out physically because there wasn't any point in pretending to listen. Then I listened downstairs on my hi-fi and it came to life. Something distinctive about the grain of their sound that I really liked, even if the songs were a bit hit and miss. Perhaps if I'd seen them live, I'd have felt the same way I did about Coin-Op around the same time.