Seafood are back! Seafood, if not famous then tolerably well know for being the kids of days spent listening, deconstructing and in turn replicating Sonic Youth with their own idiosyncratic nuances and interpretations. This the follow up to the criminally unnoticed and under promoted (due to David Line’s health issues of collapsing lung when singing) ‘As the Cry Flows’; that the mellower more considered and affecting record that deviated ever so slightly and-oh-so-sweetly from their previous grandiloquent formula. Feeling slightly unfulfilled and dejected from not being physically able to tour, it could easily have been the end of this truly vital band but with help from medics and an insatiable determination, they return and return with a punch, punch enough to wind any listener familiar with or not what Seafood do.

‘Signal Sparks’ the autobiographical stamp of the album, littered with references to Line’s medical hell of recent times, “Just breathe” is airily delivered to the waltzy backing and gentle build up to the perfect moment of realisation and the proverbial staple that holds everything that this older, wiser band are now grasping hold of with reverence and full realisation, “Don’t forget that your living” Carpe Diem and all that, this album doesn’t just seize, it positively confiscates.

The overall sound of this album is dark and dripping in polyphonic layers of neat and tidy layers of musical jigsaw that come together in most perfect moments. ‘Time & Tides’ is the restrained minor key melancholia that compliments the more brooding moments but still has a desperate sense of urgency about it that falls upon you so intensely with its haunting feedback and impending death march drumming that comes and comes, like a witch-hunt over the moors bringing ‘the fear’ until soaring vocal melody and tight drum fill after another are the lacquer on the cakey foundation of meandering bass line that collectively skirt total chaos.

The album perhaps comes to a hiatus in the mood with ‘Awkward ghost’ but this weak point still can not detract from the rest of the album, especially when it is followed up so decadently by ‘Disappear’. A song so liquid in guitar sound that it flows in a Pink Floyd style of boldness until the temp change kicks in, and its all about the Teenage Riotesque anticipation of a stealthier and immediate deliverance of musical forte.

‘Little Pieces’ IS classic Seafood, all intense and driven by a bass line best described as dirty but only when accompanied by Line’s distinctive no small hint of an American undertone vocal, but not in a false way, we aren’t talking Lost prophets pseudo American whine here, oh no. A short sharp burst of power indie pop that crashes through the consciousness with gay abandon to personal safety when inducing “the shapes of rock” that will be thrown like some human audio to motion converter.

The overriding sense of let down that is abundantly clear throughout, although in no large measure that is, comes from the production, all shine and not enough raw edge, slick and polished on every surface can be a tad disheartening, in that it removes one of the finest aspects of a Seafood live performance; Intensity compressed and subdued for the sake of allowing all those different guitar sounds to come to the fore. This self produced long player is perhaps a sign of the lust for more control over how the band is put out that was previously restricted in their Infectious Records days of old.

Clearly this is a vital album to the band, perhaps their last chance at breaking through but when boozy album closer, complete with sultry saxophone and the only song this time round to feature Caroline Banks taking the lead vocal, drops the haunting line of “How you gonna live without me?” the lyric rings so so true. Seafood are back and it is imperative that we keep them here.

www.seafood.uk.com

Review by James Ainsworth