Seagull Strange - Better Angels of Our Nature (Absolute)
2/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Operatic, multi-membered rock collectives are supposed to be all the rage now. Broken Social Scene, Antony & The Johnsons, The Sleepy Jackson, The Decembrists, and perhaps most saliently the unanimously acclaimed Arcade Fire: all critically heralded for their scope, ambition, and ability to get to the places ordinary bands just can't reach.
Bristolian sextet Seagull Strange would no doubt like to be added to that exalted roll-call. But alas, 'Better Angels Of Our Nature' won't put them there. It's a one paced album... that pace being droning, doomy tempestuous blustering rock; the guitars wail, the drums crash, the lyrics take themselves rather too seriously.
The cod-gothic 'Girl With 7 Fingers', for example, aims to re-create the macabre dread of an Edgar Allen Poe short story, but just ends up sounding a bit silly. 'Love's Sick Disease' - a jarringly overwrought attempt at Byronic dissolution would probably strike your average heavily eyeliner'd 15 year old Emo Kid as too overwrought.
'La La La Ley' follows in the in the particularly asinine tradition of Primal Scream's last album with its wannabee Iggy Pop bad-assery yelps of 'we're heading into the morning sun/ with a crucifix and a gun'. 'Bitten to the Quick' and 'Missing the Point' offer a neat line in edgy atmospherics, but prove rare moments of moderation.
The band photo in the inlay provides a neat parallel with the music- instead of being depict draped over some decaying chaise-longs in an unspeakably seamy den of Victorian den of iniquity, Seagull Strange appear to be posing at the bar of their local Wetherspoon's. For all its grand designs at epic debauchery, 'Better Angels Of Our Nature' falls just as flat.
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