British Sea Power – Live at The Regal, Oxford 15th October 2008
Walking into The Regal, a converted cinema which recently opened as a venue for bands, DJs, community events and dance, you are struck by the vastness of the hall.  The Regal is tastefully redecorated, retaining the 1930s art-deco feel and done up with several bars and a huge stage.
British Sea Power tonight aim to fill this room, and they manage it by their skill in creating a spectacle. Blue lighting, foliage placed around the stage, video projections of flocks of seagulls, waves and other nautical-based things all give you a sense of stepping into a dream as you enter the room. The silence between songs, due largely to the vastness is eerie, but somehow this adds to the surreal atmosphere of a band used to giving oddball concerts in alternative venues (I heard British Sea Power once played in a cave in Cornwall).
British Sea Power walk on to “All In It”, a slow-beating interlude-style song from their latest album “Do You Like Rock Music?”, and it is at this very moment that you realise live performance is what the band is all about.
They break into “Fear of Drowning” and “Remember Me” from their debut album “The Decline of British Sea Power”, fast-paced songs which frontman Yan Scott delivers in his vulnerably flitting voice over wall-of sound guitars and crisp drums. Both of these songs should, though don’t really manage to, excite a crowd rather daunted by the large space, apparently there for the visual rather than the physical experience.
These people shouldn’t have left disappointed however, and when the encore of “No Lucifer” comes and the stage is invaded by a huge grizzly bear, it becomes evident that the middle-aged arty crowd doesn’t stop British Sea Power having fun on stage at all.
And it is exactly this that makes this band worth seeing. No matter how well you know their music, you will never fail to marvel at the visual experience and the completely surreal and weird spectacle they manage to create.
“Waving Flags” from the “Do You Like Rock Music?” album and “Carrion” were the evening’s highlights, an evening that was clearly a success for this up-and-coming, classy venue (the manager even comes on stage to thank everyone at the end, something you’d faint at seeing in a Carling Academy).  An evening where the artiness of the venue is truly retained by a band that specialises in that field.
The disappointment of the night: I didn’t buy some of the merchandise (would it really have been worth paying £6 to have the pun “British Tea Power” on my mug?)
Film School supported the band on their tour, which goes to London for a final gig next week.

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