Originally released on 10 January in the UK/Europe and 11 January 2011in the United States, "Valhalla Dancehall" was the 4th., studio album from the Brighton-based indie rock band Sea Power, then known as "British Sea Power". The album spawned three singles "Living Is So Easy", "Who's In Control" & "Georgie Ray".
The album was recorded in South East England and on the Isle of Skye, and produced by British Sea Power and Graham Sutton. Regarding the album's title, the band have merely stated that
"Valhalla Dancehall" is possibly "just a glorified farmhouse that
sometimes runs out of oil.
Possible the greatest achievement of
Brighton's British Sea Power is to have something approximating a
stable, modest, and a normal career. Viewed fondly by the music press but
never hyped to the heavens, making accessible music but clearly
unburdened by the desire to write a hit, eccentric but never
preposterous, their three previous albums proper have each scored strong
reviews and incrementally higher chart positions and fourth set
Valhalla Dancehall seemed profoundly unlikely to buck that trend.
Mixing the sort of luminescently sinister ballads that have stood the
band in good stead throughout their career with chaotic, colourful
smears of guitar rock, this was an album that neither treaded water nor reinvented the wheel.
Instead, it saw the band continued their stately, unruffled progress. On tracks like "Who's in Control?", "Georgie Ray" and "Living is So Easy" the band warped the
music to match the words; stormy, elastic squalls of incandescent sound
that lack the hooky polish of the band's early material, yet seethe and
churn with greater force.
Valhalla Dancehall’s opening track, "Who's in Control," retained most of the previous record’s intensity and landed somewhere
between the Clash and Arcade Fire. But the song, as it turns out, was something of a red herring: it’s not so much that this record was a
radical change in sound from the last one, more that it's kind of
stylistically all over the place. There were some tracks that wouldn't
have sounded at all out of place on Rock Music, but there were also nods to the revved-up punk of their 2003 debut and more hushed
balladeering than any of their previous work.
Even when British Sea Power blowed their sound up to stadium
proportions, this album did not feel forced. The way the hazy production blends
softens the overdriven guitars on some of the louder tracks on Valhalla
can make a lot of these songs run together, but there’s no denying that "Georgie Bay" and "Observe the Skies" there were fine pieces of songwriting.
It was the ballads, however, that truly shone here. The gorgeous "Luna" showcases Yan's airy, breathy voice, which, as it turns out, is more
well-suited to the ballads than the rockers. The standout track is "Living is So Easy," a likeable pastiche of mid-'80s Cure and mid-'90s
U2.
The early part of the
record succeeded largely because it doesn't stick with one sound for too
long, but too many mid-tempo tracks towards the end—including the
unnecessarily 11-minutes-long "Once More Now"—made the record feel
longer than it is, which was a shame, because an album with this many
winners shouldn't feel like a chore to listen to.
For many, the diversity in sound worked to British Sea Power's advantage, but it also left the album feeling
weirdly unsatisfying. It’s not that any of this is bad—quite the
opposite, actually—but this record doesn't feel as complete as their
others.
Unfortunately this was a band with big ambitions but not too much hype, which
often makes them come across as unpretentious and unassuming, but what’s
missing here that made their last few records great is a sense of
purpose. Valhalla Dancehall was a solid album, but for so many that didn't matter.
Valhalla Dancehall Track List:
1. Who's In Control
2. We Are Sound
3. Georgie Ray
4. Stunde Null
5. Mongk II
6. Luna
7. Baby
8. Living Is So Easy
9. Observe The Skies
10. Cleaning Out The Rooms
11. Thin Black Sail
12. Once More Now
13. Heavy Water
