British Sea Power have announced a name change and new album alongside the release of the single “Two Fingers”.
Now known as Sea Power, the band are back after four years with new music and the follow-up to “Let The Dancers Inherit The Party”. New album Everything Was Forever is released on February 11, 2022.
Leading the news is “Two Fingers”, a song that the band describes as having “strong hopeful intent, a desire to start anew” amid contrasting observations about racism and the social fabric of the UK.
“The song is part inspired by our late dad”, co-frontman Yan Wilkinson said. “He was always giving a two-fingered salute to people on the telly – a kind of old-fashioned drinking term, toasting people or events: ‘I’ll drink two fingers to that’, to some news item or to memories of a childhood friend.
Yan, who is joined by his brother Hamilton alongside Martin Noble and Matthew Wood in the group, added: “In the song it’s a toast to everyone, remembering those in our lives and those sadly no longer here and to making the world a better place. The song is ‘Fuck me, fuck you, fuck everything.’ But it’s also ‘Love me, love you, love everything’ – exultation in the darkness. If you say ‘fuck you’ in the right way, it really can be cathartic, a new start.”
He continued: “It’s maybe interesting that the song mentions nightmare monsters from the world of [writer] HP Lovecraft. This song has been around a little while, partly because of the big interruption of Covid. Between the song being written and the album being finished, the TV series Lovecraft Country was broadcast – which took the supernatural Lovecraft and ran it alongside 1950s America and Lovecraft’s racism.
“[Lovecraft] was a terrible racist, a white supremacist, which is why his world is there in the song, like anti-matter – something full of horror and mankind at its worst. But, alongside the negative forces in the song, there’s also a strong hopeful intent, a desire to start anew. Beyond that, the track has influences that are just inspiring – David Lynch, Cold War Steve, the Sex Pistols, Joe Meek’s Telstar, the beauty of isolated landscapes.”
The band said they decided to change their name to Sea Power to avoid any misinterpretations of jingoism. They said in press material that they “deeply love the British Isles” but the name change “is modest gesture of separation from the wave of crass nationalism that has traversed our world recently”.
Everything Was Forever tracklist:
01. “Scaring At The Sky”
02. “Transmitter”
03. “Two Fingers”
04. “Fire Escape In The Sea”
05. “Doppelgänger”
06. “Fear Eats The Soul”
07. “Folly”
08. “Green Goddess”
09. “Lakeland Echo”
10. “We Only Want To Make You Happy”
Fans can pre-order Everything Was Forever here.