What do you do when the music world leaves you behind? Do you adapt to the changing times, or firmly stick to an aging formula in the hopes of rekindling a flame? British Sea Power, with sixth studio album Machineries of Joy, seems a strong proponent of the latter approach and has responded to the shifting tide of modern music with a thoroughly traditional stab at British pop rock. It’s both highly listenable and admirably produced, but it’s in no way bold enough as a musical statement to make the case for the revival of ‘90s British alt-rock the group seems so intent on spawning. There is nothing on this record that hasn’t been done before by Oasis, The Verve, Travis or even British Sea Power, and while Machineries of Joy may be a perfectly pleasant way to spend 40 minutes, you’ll forget about it the second it ends. In that sense, the record is indeed somewhat of a time capsule … just not in the way British Sea Power clearly intended.
The record starts out strongly enough, with a slow-building title track that features some optimistic-sounding guitar, steady drums and a string section in the background. From a production standpoint, it makes for a warm and inviting mix, but the songwriting just doesn’t match up — the song’s got a flat chorus in which singer Scott Wilkinson repeats the thoroughly meaningless statement “we are magnificent machineries of joy,” and a bridge in which he assures that “help is on the way” as if British Sea Power are here to save rock-n-roll from lounge singers with computers and blonde chicks with electronic rigs. Looking past the inherent egoism in these lines, Wilkinson’s delivery is just plain uninspired, giving an unexpected irony to this record — for all of British Sea Power’s reliance on traditional rock elements, this record’s all machinery and no joy.
The second track “K Hole” (whatever that means) seems to start off promisingly, with one of the record’s boldest moments as Wilkinson screams wildly over a swell of electronic effects and guitar. A few seconds later, when the verse kicks in, what you’ll instead find is a pretty by-the-numbers rip-off of some of Radiohead’s earlier work. It’s decent, and definitely one of the record’s more powerful moments, but at the end of the day it’s nothing to email home about.
The record generally seems content to stay within the confines of this sort of rock-music-for-Susan-Boyle-fans formula, with choruses that don’t really go anywhere, lyrics that don’t really mean anything (“I got sucked into prudish megalomania,” “It’s all computational, it’s all educational”) and instrumentalists who sound competent but never do anything to wow you. Occasional stylistic forays do reveal that the members of British Sea Power have listened to something other than ‘90s alt-rock (Radiohead for “K Hole”; The Clash on “Loving Animals”; Ra Ra Riot on “Monsters of Sunderland”), but in general, the record sticks to its guns.
The only thing flat-out tiresome about the group rests with Wilkinson’s accented croon — it’s charmingly unconventional at first, but by the end of Machineries, you realize he’s talking more than he’s actually singing, and it’s a grating approach in the long form. And when British Sea Power drop the tempo, as on “Hail Holy Queen” or “A Light Above Descending,” you might as well consider it white noise.
All of this sounds like a rather harsh critique of a record that doesn’t do all that much capital-W “wrong.” Truthfully, I really wanted to like this record. But British Sea Power do so little to engage the listener throughout Machineries’ forty or so minutes that it’s every bit as frustrating as it is aesthetically pleasant. This record could just have easily been released 10 or 20 years ago, and while no one would have given a damn then, at least it would have been 10 or 20 years more original. Instead, Machineries of Joy feels like the musical equivalent of a print shop — there might still be a market for it, but it’s going nowhere so fast you can’t help but feel sorry for its owners.
