Album Review

By The Sea – By The Sea

• 9th Nov 2012

By The Sea are the latest psych enthused band from the Wirral. Their debut out on Dell Orso records and The Great Pop Supplement on LP has been long awaited following successful single releases.

The album is no disappointment either with dreamy carnival sounds reminiscent of early Verve.

Opener By The Sea is well crafted and layered with floating vocals. Second track Dream Waters’ is the band’s latest single, a tropical backdrop with sounds likened to soft Stone Roses of the Second Coming ilk think All Across The Sands. Already the band’s knack is to ensure poignant moments of their songs get stuck in your head as is the case with this track as lead singer Liam Power sings And make our way back home another day.

So Long, So Far is a creeping, delicate track with melodic chimes & instrumentals throughout. The album is already creating images of lonely lighthouses caught in stormy seas matched then to calmer sunny skies.

Eveline a pounding crisp track layered with many different sounds that is intriguingly put together. There definitely has been some clever production which has come in the form of ex-Coral pioneer Bill Ryder Jones.

Waltz Away is certainly the album’s showpiece a storming summer track with catchy riffs and superb haunting vocals from Liam Power. A Sail Floats… an epic film track in the making.

A mixture of light and dark the album proves quite seasonal apparent on Wait A Day. This is a sun setting track with calypso guitars and there’s even a clank of The La-s undertoning.

Alone Together is surprisingly a more uplifting effort with a unison chorus of We’re alone together this will ring in your head for days and is held nicely with a skiffle drum beat. Final track Game of Circles ties the album up nicely and the sound rings around as if the music is trapped in a secret box waiting to explode on the world.

A subtle, psychedelic and dreamy Verve like album that is impressively put together where each song rolls into the other. On this outing the six piece band has clearly got bigger things ahead, easily the best album out of Merseyside/Wirral in the last few years.

A superb debut.

Venue: By The Sea
Support Band: Dellorso/The Great Pop Supplement