Pitchfork

British Sea Power's 2003 salvo The Decline of British Sea Power still stands as one of this decade's most arresting debut indie-rock albums, an unlikely but assured reconciliation of two opposing strains of classic college-rock: the slash-and-burn guitar screech that made campus-radio darlings out of the Pixies and early Pavement, and the sort of picture-postcard art-rock epitomized by Echo and the Bunnymen album covers. That contrast was amplified in the band's notoriously unhinged live shows-- which often resembled a nature conservatory taken over by asylum escapees-- but the band's contradictory quality was all but washed out on 2005's more temperate Open Season which, as second albums so often do, sacrificed too much of the noise for poise.

So it was with considerable relief that I received the news that British Sea Power were planning to record their third album in Montreal with Efrim Menuck and Howard Bilerman, two men who-- through their respective involvement with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Arcade Fire's Funeral-- know a great deal about striking a fine balance between grit and grandeur. The album, set for release this year, will be called Do You Like Rock Music? In the interim, British Sea Power provide the Krankenhaus? EP, whose five songs answer their own album's question in the affirmative. It's the first British Sea Power release to truly capture the anarchic joy of the band's live performances, specifically that moment when the band's traditional set-closer "Lately" degenerates into unhinged thrashing and bashing, wanton destruction, tin-drum marches through the crowd and singer Yan piggyback-riding on guitarist Noble's soldiers.

Which isn't to say that history buff Yan has stopped pondering the vagaries of modern life-- his first words on opener "Atom (Edit)" are "I'd be the first to admit this is a bright but haunted age/ I just don't know"-- but the song's breakneck momentum indicate he's not going to lose sleep over them anymore, and if the closing noise crescendo is supposed to approximate the sound of a plane crashing, Yan seems oddly at peace with his fiery fate. (The track appears in prolonged form on Rock Music as "Atom", sandwiched by a teasingly mellow intro passage and an even more chaotic conclusion.) The other Rock Music representative, "Down on the Ground", provides a more sanguine variation on its predecessor's hard-charged abandon-- tempered by a bright, 120 Minutes-vintage chorus-- but the band switches gears impressively with brother Hamilton's "Straight Down the Line", a rickety, lo-fi ramble that could pass for a lost Clean seven-inch from 1982.

When Yan returns for "Hearing Aid", his mood appears to have taken a turn for the somber, warbling out a loose, barely defined melody over an ominous piano din. But he's soon rudely interrupted by a scorching Crazy Horse guitar grind that essentially serves as the sound-check for Krankenhaus?'s nine-minute, two-part closer "The Pelican", a motorik rock-out that's destined to replace "Lately" as the band's set-ending, room-clearing meltdown. Krankenhaus?'s air of giddy petulance is infectious enough to allow you to overlook the fact its songs lack the emotional resonance that defines British Sea Power's best work ("Carrion", "Fear of Drowning"). But the recent release of Do You Like Rock Music?'s grand first single, "Waving Flags", finds the band applying guitar-scraped dissonance to more heartfelt, purposeful songcraft-- suggesting that Krankenhaus? is not so much a teaser for the upcoming album as a document of the spirited rehearsal-space warm-up jams that transpired before they got down to serious business.