If not all around, fear certainly lurks under the surface, as Glasgow’s Sea Kings pick up from where they left off, a decade ago.
Release Date : 8th November 2024
Label: Iffy Folk Records
Format: vinyl / digital
The Sea Kings, then? A gap in my proverbial I am afraid, and when their promo talks of the return of the band, of a 10 year hiatus and “their celebrated debut” all of that decade ago, I begin to get angsty in my apparent ignorance. This is added to by a google bringing up first the name of a Cornwall folk band of the same name.
So, lets get it right, this The Sea Kings is a Glasgow band and, for a moment, they were huge, at least on Kelvinside, with that debut, Woke In The Devil’s Arms, gaining acclaim and plaudits, if few sales. Glasgow underdogs is a description that always endears, that city, and the Scottish Central Belt as a whole, forever a petri dish for that cross fertilisation of rock with all else available, with Postcard Records were providing an admirable template. Indeed, that shadow is cast long across the sound of this band, a world where it is always the 1980’s. And proud to be.
laying down the seeds
It seems the seeds for this recording were laid down shortly after the release of the debut, ahead the members electing instead to go their four ways. But, reconvening, with a new drummer, meant they able to both reimagine and revive that material. Brian Canning, on vocals and guitars, Nicky Kelly on lead guitar, Ralph Hector on bass, keys and backing vocals, are joined by Ben Brown, the new recruit behind the kit.
Cardinal Sin leads, with scuzzily picked guitars, behind which an organ grinds out a suitably chunky backdrop. Canning has a truly chameleonic voice, with echoes of many other singers present, if not necessarily in his tones, more in his delivery. Here the flavour is a of a slightly grungier R.E.M., Idlewild perhaps, and his voice skims a little off both Stipe and Woomble, with a little of the higher pitch of even Glenn Tillbrook. It’s a strong start, the weaving repetition of guitar bonding well with the keys, a healthy clatter arising from the engine room.
wailing like a younger gallagher
This then drops into the more portentous opening tones of The Bevin Boy. Bevin boys were the wartime conscripts who, rather than going to fight, were sent down the mines, arguably an equally dangerous proposition, not least as assumptions were made as to their presence there, slated as dodgers, whereas, bar a select few, that choice of destination was anything but their own. Here, over an echo-laden coalface of sound, Canning wails not unlike, remarkably, the younger Gallagher, were Oasis (et al) ever to turn their tail to social documentary. A slumbering giant of a song, it is quite a statement, ending on an eerie lingering note.
big production
The title track picks up halfway between the two, with agreeably juddering guitars. a taste of latterday Fannie style Glaswegiana. The production, from Hector, is big enough to sustain concentration on the individual parts, allowing the listener to switch between Canning’s voice and Kelly’s guitar parts, without losing sight of the overall arrangement. Maybe a bit too Britpop by numbers on this track, but these are good numbers in a sustainable order. The Unassuming Engineer has one of those lively fast strums to open, before a frantic vocal, the whole full on fast forward, and, stripping away the likely complex narrative (and probably too the band image) and this could be a Celtic folk punk song. It is short, sharp and eminently worth a replay.
With Heavyweights returns to the narrative of war and, once more, I am hearing a core that could emanate from unexpected quarters. Call me daft, but under the bluster, I can hear a folk song in the mould of Steve Knightley. No fiddles, mind, the main thrust being the inventive drums of Brown and what I am supposing is a synthesiser, from Hector. His bass, while we discuss him, is very much of the school of doom, slow notes that thunder.
creeping pretension?
If Crematoria Dostoevsky, with a title like that, suggests a smidgeon of creeping pretension, I feel that wouldn’t be a poor assessment, with some of the rhymes fully stretching any acceptance. (Ammonia/Crematoria?) For all of that, it isn’t a bad bit of post punk proto-prog, especially as realisation comes that this song is actually full-blown synth-rock, in disguise, in all but instrumentation; my imagination had fun applying a Depeche Mode wash of doom to it, the guitars replaced by Rolands, but keeping the gates of hell percussion. And Dave Gahan could possibly make these lyrics sound less, well, preposterous, having form for such. I know this sounds all snarky put down, but, you know, I admire the instinct and defend their right to submit such oddness for our delectation.
The Judge then steps back into guitar rock orthodoxy. However, struggling to pick up the whole narrative, one feels matters as weighty as this cry out for a lyric sheet, unless mystery is part their mantra. (And I say orthodoxy, but am I alone in finding room to insert “fade to grey” into the song at certain moments?) Hector’s piano has a firm grip on this one, and the stop-start percussion in the middle grabs attention.
if allowed a favourite…
In The Depths Of Despair starts off with the grim couplet “In the depths of despair, I left my home, in the depths of despair, I left my wife alone” and doesn’t get any lighter. But one feels this is the mindset that suits best the songwriting of this band, such is their skill at the overwrought. If I am allowed a favourite, I think it this, so righteously dark is it. The slow and relentless rhythmic step up and down of notes has sufficient jagged barbs to latch into an off-kilter catchy.
The more upbeat What Will Come To Me is a bizarrely effective melding of the Undertones with Ultravox, with, for good measure, Canning now channeling the voice of the late Pete Shelley. An energetic pell mell scramble for the door, or for the dancefloor, it exemplifies the range this four piece seem to have at their command.
Closer, Pimlico, starts as reflective and sombre set ender, although is that the word guillotine I hear in the first sentence? It seems it is another rumination of war, with “a pinprick of the poppy on my skin, a brigadier in my ear” proving possible pointers, if baffling. Cancer of the gullet and suicide also feature, so Lord know what demons are hiding here. Yet it is a good song, Hector adding simple yet lyrical bass patterns before an explosive mellotronic finale. (My notes say Moody Blues here, but extremely bloody miserable might be more apt. Yet it has a certain, if not charm, certainly chutzpah, even as “our children howl at the moon.”)
a schizoid split
Make no mistake about it, I don’t need to know, or want, even, to know where the ideas for this album all came from. There is almost a schizoid split between sound and content, yet, uncannily, it still holds together, with appeal as much on a simplistic sonic level, just as much for the wary admiration for some of the wilder skirmishes of the soul, slinking beneath that surface. Sure, some of the wilder moments don’t, and shouldn’t, attract too much earnest analysis, but, as a rollercoaster ride through their Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, it’s a fine old ride. Roll on 2034 for album number three?
Here is In The Depths Of Despair:
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