I got a late offer of a ticket to see Sea Power at Manchester's Albert Hall last Friday night, a band I've not seen live before. They are touring to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the release of their album Do You Like Rock Music? and the main part of the set is the album played in full, in order. The Albert Hall is a stunning venue, an old Methodist chapel on the first floor of a Victorian Manchester building with stained glass windows, an upper balcony with bench seating and pipe organ as a backdrop to the stage. Sea Power dropped the British from their name in 2021 as a protest against 'crass nationalism', a drop in the ocean maybe but a change that succeeded in annoying the right people. The stage is decorated with trees and foliage, lit from below. Sea Power appear on stage in darkness, brothers Yan and Hamilton at the centre, guitarist Noble to the left, with keys/ trumpeter Phil Sumner and violinist Aby Fry, waving and saluting the crowd with drinks. They start at the start of Do You Like Rock Music?, the slow gentle ebb of All In It fading in and then gathering pace and steam as they work their way through the album, the band's brothers switching guitars and places at the mic.
No Lucifer and Waving Flags are early highlights, the latter a modern indie anthem, sounding big and celebratory, the hopefulness of the song and its lyrics welcoming immigrants from Eastern Europe to the UK, now sounding more like a wistful lament for a pre- Brexit world than a celebration of a world without borders. No Lucifer with Hamilton at the mic and its opening chant of 'easy, easy' is widescreen indie rock, Aby's violin and Phil's keys adding shade and light to the twin guitar sound.
The band disappear after the album's last song We Close Our Eyes, a hugely appreciative crowd and a mosh pit waiting for their return. The six song encore is a second mini- set and although the energy levels drop a little they pick back up with 2021 single Two Fingers, a song that is a salute and a toast, a song in memory of the Wilkinson brothers' late dad, a windswept song that says 'fuck you' to the world, remembers those who have gone and one that intends to start again- 'two fingers for the dead/ two fingers for the living/ two fingers for the world that we all live in'.