Seachange - Disband in Bonn 2007

  by John Clarkson

published: 7 / 1 / 2008

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Review

When Pennyblackmusic spoke to vocalist Daniel Eastop at the time of the release of Seachange’s second album, ‘On Fire, With Love’, in September 2006, he acknowledged that, to cope with different circumstances in its members’ personal lives, the band too was going to have change too if it was to keep functioning. It wasn’t to be. With bassist James Vyner having moved to London and become involved in two other bands and guitarist Neil Cormack having had a baby with violinist Johanna Cormack, the septet, which had formed eight years before when its members were all students at university in their native Nottingham, announced on their website that they were breaking up two days after they had played a final show in Bonn on March 24th 2007. Eastop and Seachange’s other members, multi-instrumentalist Neil Wells, guitarist Simon Aldcroft and drummer David Gray, are now working on an as-yet-untitled project. In the meantime the Glitterhouse label has released as a farewell offering a recording of the Bonn gig, which was shown on the ‘Rockpalast’ TV show in Germany, where Seachange were always more popular than in their own country. Although Seachange knew that the Bonn show would be their last gig, ‘Disband in Bonn 2007’ avoids the trappings of other final show albums. There are no valedictory farewell speeches from the stage. In fact Eastop says very little between songs, but this, however, is entirely appropriate. Despite having toured in Europe with Mission of Burma and Electrelane and America with Guided by Voices on their own final dates, Seachange were never big on self-proclamation, preferring instead to let their music talk for itself. What we get instead is an almost perfect career resume. Eight of the sixteen tracks on ‘Disband in Bonn’ come from ‘On Fire, With Love’, but there is also a smattering of songs from Seachange’s 2004 debut album, ‘Lay of the Land’, and also various early single and EP tracks. It opens with ‘Anti-Story’, one of the standout tracks from ‘On Fire, With Love’, and then gradually draws backwards in time, showing Seachange’s development from a lo-fi rock group with a soaring and turbulent sound to at times a more mellow and pastoral pop/folk act. More evident here than on the two albums and singles is Eastop’s literary obsession, Iris Murdoch, Virginia Woolf, Henry Miller and the Book of Ruth all getting name checked. At the end, the howled Stooges-like white noise adrenalin rush and angst of 2003 first single, ‘Superfuck’ and its B sides, ‘Forty Nights’ and ‘Seven Miles from Intrex’, are all thrown in, before the album goes full circle with the reflective ‘Punch and Judy’, the penultimate track from ‘On Fire, With Love’. ‘Disband in Bonn 2007’ captures a band bowing out at the height of their career and in a blaze of thunder. Despite being little known outside Germany and hardly at all in their native Britain, this bittersweet farewell offering shows an increasingly diverse act leaving the stage perhaps before its time and which a year on from its demise still has much to recommend.

Track Listing:-

1 Anti-Story
2 No Backward Glances
3 Youth And Art
4 Shooting Arrows
5 Half A Love
6 News From Nowhere
7 Glitterball
8 Fog
9 Midsummer Fires
10 The Key
11 Personal Assistant
12 Christmas Letters
13 Forty Nights
14 Superfuck
15 Seven Miles From Intrex
16 Punch And Judy

Label Links:-

http://label.glitterhouse.com/
https://www.facebook.com/GlitterhouseR
https://twitter.com/glitterhouserec
https://www.youtube.com/user/Glitterho