Seachange - Lay Of TheLand

Mon 15th Mar, 2004 in Music Reviews

Here’s the thing about Seachange. The band is a six piece from Nottingham inthe UK, sporting dark, tense and anthemic rock music complete with edgy guitars, syncopated rhythms, and their secret weapon, a soaring violin player.

They also happen to be the first UK band that Matador, legendary US indie label, has signed in four years, so some have said the band has a lot to live up to.

Well first of all, that’s nonsense. If a band is signed to a great label like Matador, you’d think that would reflect the calibre of the music. Plus you’d have to imagine just as much if not more pressure would be faced if they were signed to a major. But industry points aside, with Lay Of The Land, Seachange have delivered an interesting album and a very promising start.

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly thrilled on first listen. There seemed to be an absence of colour in the music or a strong sense of melody in the songs. But before long, actually from the second listen, the dark magic of Seachange weaves its way in, and what was once a monochromatic experience takes on a layered, hypnotic edge, revealing power and subtlety in equal measures.

Frontman Dan Eastop doesn’t so much sing, as speak-sing in a language of hook heavyrhythmic urgency, excavating a tunnel to his own fractured source of inspiration and back again. He’s a strong vocalist with an expression that recalls stream of consciousness styled poetry coupled with assured but insistent pleas. From AvsCo10: “Just one chance – please? Or the people will revert to casinosand sleaze. Council is agreed – you may proceed. But you have six months in the church or you must leave.”News From Nowhere, one of the album’s more interesting tracks reveals as much about Eastop as it does about the character in the song: “Keep inside until the first green shows,he says the trees tell him all he needs to know. Cut off from the rest of the world, nervous speech in riddles and codes.”There’s anxious post-punk energy here in spades, but it’s matched with introspective trance like arrangements clothed in swirls of dark but pretty noise.

Not unlike the Cure inplaces, but then again not unlike a lot of things, and certainly with enough that’s unique to Seachange. The twin guitar attack of Adam Cormack and Dave Gray impress equally on noise driventracks like the explosive AvsCo10 or during the reflective textured colourings of Fog, underscoring the fact Seachange has built a solid reputation on kinetic live performances. In fact one of the thoughts Lay Of The Land leaves me with is a desire to see the band live. The rhythm section (James Vyner bass and Simon Aldcroft, drums) hold the tension together faultlessly, simply driving straight ahead when necessary, or in songs like Anglokana and News From Nowhere, chopping up rhythms to great effectrecalling a less composed but slightly more desperate Interpol.  The unexpected violin playing of Johanna Woodnutt acts as icing on the cake. With requisite melancholy she provides the fiery lines that bring out the sextet’s folk element,helping to ignite a theatrical sense inherent in each of the musicians. It’s this poetry and drama which sets Seachange apart.

Ultimately Seachange are at their best when all elements fire as one. Then we have a band united by a passion for performance, not afraid for example, to take several minutes in a song before igniting the wick which catapults you to the end of the track.

All this could be pretentious or self-conscious in the wrong hands. But here it feels both unaffected and unassuming. That’s how with each listen, Seachange are able to draw you further into their undeniably romantic and inevitably black lake. In the end, I’m exhausted but happily drowned.