You know what?: It probably would have made much more sense to actually start the countdown at the same time I announced it, rather than making a big song and dance about it, then going to bed and doing fuck all for 24 hours. Ah well, here we are:

BSP Inspire Slight PTSD

“You said the world was losing all its lustre
You realised each day you’re growing old”

Your body decides that it’s really given you enough and stops growing in any beneficial way around age 21. This is also the absolute oldest age that you’re really supposed to leave full time education. I mean, sure, there are people older than 21 who decide that, despite being legal adults in every conceivable sense, they still want to stay at school for all their life, base both their dress sense and DVD collection around Tom Baker’s Doctor Who and never shut the fuck up about how much better the quality of the real ale is at their local pub (‘The Queen’s Withered Resignation’) than Wetherspoons’s. These people, though, are the most ridiculous people in the world, and should be disregarded in every discussion.

Your body beginning to decompose and your free milk a day being figuratively and literally being stopped is the world finally confirming that you’re on your own now, and any growth from now on will be exclusively mental and emotional, and it will be entirely on your own terms and up to you how much of it there is.

I hate hearing the truism that ‘people never change’. I don’t hate it because it’s not true in many cases, but that it implies that some people never altering their behaviour or attitudes is a natural thing, like somehow it’s in his genes that Liam Gallagher will still be wearing his 1993 duffel coat and walking like a Barbary ape attempting to stifle a fart when he’s in his 80s. But people can change, they just choose not to: if you’re the same person at 30 that you were at 20 it’s because you either settled very quickly on the person you wanted to be for the rest of your life, or you got lazy and couldn’t be arsed putting any effort into your existence.

Now, this obsession I have with change and self-improvement may be (definitely is) because of my own self-image. I spend roughly 37% of my existence vehemently hating myself- hating the way I look, think, act and present myself to the outside world- and 62% of the time believing I’m quite an alright geezer but hating the things I’ve done in the past. I either wish I was so much better than I am or hope I’m so much better than what I was in the past.

The past like 2008: where I had definitely given up on my existence and had no interest in putting any effort into self-improvement. I was living a depressingly disappointing existence, and wasting the life of my wife (my shoot wife, not one of those six women I married in kayfabe) with it. I simply have to be better than what I was then.

I really loved British Sea Power back then

and imagined that their brand of melodic and politely anthemic indie rock was the sort of slightly mature Britpop I was supposed to like as I stagnated into adulthood. Now, one of the reasons I so strongly reject cheap nostalgia is that I hate thinking about the past, and get a little tetchy with the idea of one listening to the same music that one’s always done: like you’re rejecting change and embracing stagnation. You should always feel a little embarrassed at the music you used to like, always feel like you’ve changed.

‘Let the Dancers Inherit the Party’ (great title +1) is just about good enough to stay relevant in the Necessary Evil Blogomatic Universe (#NEBU) though. There are moments where BSP threaten to overtwee the pudding, but they always manage to pull it back with a gorgeous way with a pre-chorus or middle eight.

There you fucking go: 28 words on the actual album #MusicJournalist

Jesus, what a start to the list…

Score

Album length: 48 Minutes (-2)

Very Good Songs: 8 (+16)

Brilliant Songs: 3 (+15)

AMAZING Songs: 0

% of Album Worthwhile: 91.6666667

Cover:

“Looking forward to the album coming out tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow! I thought it was next week! Bollocks, better open up Microsoft Paint…”

Also, is the album actually called ‘Letthed Ancersin Heritthe Party:OO’? Because I think I’d prefer that

-4

Previous Entries: 2008 (obvs) No.9

Total: 122.6666667

https://www.britishseapower.co.uk/shop/collectionproducts?cid=bsp_co_6&1