Album Review

Official Secrets Act – Bloodsport

• 2nd Jun 2009

Bloodsport is a remarkably inappropriate name for a song which makes you feel like you’re being stroked from head to toe with marshmallows. Gently. On a feather bed. In the clouds.

Unfortunately for Official Secrets Act, no-one seems to have told them that being stroked from head to toe gently with marshmallows on a feather bed in the clouds might get a bit, erm, boring after the first couple of minutes.

More sedate than the band’s previous offerings, upcoming single Bloodsport is the sort of epic indie-pop track that wants to be filed somewhere between British Sea Power and Arcade Fire and ends up falling short of both. It begins promisingly, matching singer Tom’s soaring vocals to a surprisingly erudite opening verse before – oops. Ronan Keating called. He wants his chorus back.

Forming after discovering a shared interest in British military history (there‘s rock ‘n‘ roll for ya), Official Secrets Act have the right backstory to go down the British Sea Power pseudo-military pro-Brit path – which is, of course, strewn with indigenous British plants – but Bloodsport lacks the angular post-punk energy of the band’s earlier releases and will no doubt fall into a suitably dozy afternoon slot on radio playlists. Shame.