archive review originally posted on the losing today site c.2004 ……
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SEAFOOD
AS THE CRY FLOWS
(Cooking Vinyl)
Sheer bad luck, critical indifference, general ignorance and near death experiences has been Seafood’s lot, it’s a wonder that they are still about let alone quietly causing a rumble with this their third album (and first for new label Cooking Vinyl). Resigned to the fact the bandwagon won’t come near, the authors of some of the finest moments of indie pop in the last half decade have set up their own and with a fitting two fingered wave have come up with the oozing elegance that is ‘As the cry flows’ to neatly balance pastoral beauty with the ballistic, an album of such intimate mood, it has Seafood moving away from the attrition based pop motifs into something a little more considered and refined.
From the opening I dreamt we ruled the sun which sees Caroline Banks take up lead vocals to the enchanting glow of the magnificent Wicker Man cover Willow’s Song, Seafood playfully tantalise and pick away at your resolve, toying with moments of countrified bleakness and longing folk dynamics, its nearest cousin is 2000’s ‘Death Of Quickspace’ by Quickspace with the subtle signs of the Freed Unit’s English folk psychedelia and Blue Oyster Cult sneak through the backdoor. The ghosts of the Pixies and Radiohead attrition still throbs away especially when they unexpectedly veer of the radar as on the paranoid Heat was against me and within the folds of the cutting pop gloss of the razored pulse racing Good Reason. Elsewhere the recent single Summer Falls could have been stripped from the very heavens such is it’s sly effervescent hooks aplenty pop bite, the rustically trippy amble of the dainty Orange Rise will leave you speechless with admiration while the late 60’s Kinks-esque music hall of Milk and Honey even outplays the scouse sea shanty psychedelia of the Coral. Such treats are hard to come by, but to have twelve of the blighters, well that’s just plain greedy. Brilliant in other words.
the sunday experience 