We never had a plan: Sea Power talk new album and surviving the ‘00s indie boom

Sea Power frontman Yan Scott Wilkinson speaks to Headliner about the band’s new album Everything Was Forever, the indie rock boom that exploded around them 20 years ago and the innate ‘weirdness’ that has made them one of the UK’s most enduring outfits…

“I was thinking this is the most together album we’ve made in a while,” laughs Sea Power (formerly British Sea Power) singer, songwriter and guitarist Yan Scott Wilkinson after Headliner puts it to him that the band’s new album Everything Was Forever ranks among the most eclectic records they have released yet. He’s right. The record, the follow-up to 2017’s Let The Dancers Inherit The Party, is indeed among the most musically cohesive additions to the band’s canon, but it’s also one of their most sonically and artistically adventurous. 

“If you think about the moods, I guess it is quite eclectic, as there are slow atmospheric things on there, and then there is alternative - but still pop - songs with big choruses and stuff like that. But despite that I see it as quite together and it really flows, even though there are different directions. Because we’ve got three songwriters and different ways of doing things it is quite hard to put things together, but we put quite a lot of effort into doing that this time [he laughs] despite those quite different sides.”

Released on February 18, Everything Was Forever sees Yan and his fellow Sea Power songwriters, brother and fellow vocalist, Neil Hamilton Wilkinson, and guitarist Martin Noble explore the extremities of the sound they have cultivated over the past two decades to the fullest. Singles Two Fingers and Green Goddess and the Joy Division-tinged Doppelganger demonstrate Sea Power at their thrilling, anthemic best and look certain to become live favourites, while the gentle lilt of Fire Escape In The Sea and Fear Eats The Soul are among the band’s most intimate and delicate moments to date. Soaring album closer We Only Want To Make You Happy, featuring vocals from both Yan and Neil, might just be the most beautiful song they’ve ever committed to record.

When we join Yan over Zoom from the music room of his Brighton home, he’s in affable, often self-effacing mood. Over the course of an hour-long chat, we discuss everything from the new record to Nirvana, the indie boom of the early ‘00s, supporting The Fall, and where the band sits in today’s indie rock landscape. On why they have never fully broken into the mainstream, despite a sizeable collection of arena-sized choruses in their catalogue, he ponders before laughing: “Well, someone was saying the other day that we jammed with Faust and then did a split single with The Wurzels. And not long ago we did an evening at the Barbican playing live music to Polish animations…”

This innate weirdness and eccentricity has very likely hindered any potential crossover into the tier of Radio 1 stardom and major festival headline slots, but it is also intrinsic to the magic they create and the wonder they inspire from their fans. A sense of chaos also continues to follow them, even 20 years and nine albums into their career.

“I guess I can safely say we didn’t have a plan,” Wilkinson says when asked about how the new record came together. “I often wish we had a plan. I think plans are good. We find it hard to agree on anything though. It was pretty random. There’s a song called Fire Escape In The Sea which was a demo originally for Machineries Of Joy and was then reused on the soundtrack for a computer game called Disco Elysium (for which the band won a BAFTA in 2020 for Best Game Soundtrack). It then fell back into favour and a hybrid version came on to the album. That’s the oldest song on there. Then there are songs Martin started like Doppelganger and Green Goddess that were brand new. Songs like Two Fingers we played live before the pandemic, and Neil’s songs… I don’t know how old they are because he never tells us anything!”

With a collection of more than 30 songs to choose from, the band called upon regular Sea Power producer and collaborator Graham Sutton to make sense of the situation, after connecting with him during one of Tim Burgess’s Twitter Listening Parties, which saw almost all of the band’s albums featured.

“He is the person who understands us best and does our best mixes,” he explains. “It was a happy streak of luck. It’s a personality thing. He’s like a combination of someone who’s incredibly good technically, and he’s not really a mainstream kind of guy [pauses]… he’s probably even weirder than we are,” he laughs. “He did our second album, when we couldn’t sort our third album he helped us finish that, he did the Man Of Aran soundtrack and one other album, so he has quite a history and he knows us well.”

While discussing the band’s relationship with producers, Wilkinson cites the work of Steve Albini as being among the first records to turn him on to the ‘sound’ of music.

“The first [production influence] that springs to mind is Pixies with Steve Albini,” he says, “but a lot of that was due to the Pixies being really ready. They were able to make the most of that live-in-a-room situation. And on the other hand, I’ve always had a thing for Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. And you notice things like a lot of Iggy Pop’s best ones were made when David Bowie was there. Iggy Pop’s really amazing [he trails off]; he made some pretty stupid records, but even those are pretty good though!”

Could he ever see the band working with someone like Steve Albini? Stripping the band back to its rawest elements and capturing them live in a room?

“I think it appeals but I don’t know if we’re capable of it,” he suggests. “At the moment we’re more the other way. It’s almost like collages at times, or layers of depth and sound, so it would be a big change. We have had the odd time where we’ve gone down that route and it is quite good and interesting, so you never know. But I can’t see it happening to be honest! I was mixing some radio sessions of ours and they are recorded live in a room, and it sounded pretty good… it’s a good idea, maybe we should put it forward! The thing is, with the six of us, we’re very democratic so whenever we vote on things it’s always three all [laughs].

“I like The KLF and Bill Drummond. That’s a different process altogether. That’s almost like a really artistic weird version of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. In some ways that’s more fun.”

Almost 20 years on from the release of their debut The Decline of British Sea Power, the band emerged at a time when the indie rock scene on both sides of the Atlantic was enjoying a renaissance of sorts. In the UK, bands such as The Libertines, Razorlight and Franz Ferdinand were NME cover regulars, as were the likes of New York’s Interpol, The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all being widely heralded as saviours of rock ‘n’ roll while threatening the mainstream with ‘guitar music’ for the first time since the days of Britpop. Sea Power, however, never quite fit that mould.

“I think we were very ambitious early on about getting so much different stuff into one album or one song, and that can be pretty confusing,” Wilkinson says of the band’s outsider status. “That was back when the NME could almost make a band. We started a bit before that but not in a proper way where we’d released any records. So, by the time we got our stuff together that stuff was also happening. Interpol took us on our first proper tour in Europe and they were absolutely lovely to us. I used to watch them every night and I still have a massive fondness for them. The interplay between the musicians is fantastic on that first album, and I think they’re still good. And I think Paul Banks is really good. I liked Carlos a lot, he brought something great, him and the drums was a great combination. And Paul’s done his hip-hop stuff which is different and is quite brave.

“All those bands were kind of cool weren’t they,” he continues. “They were cool musiciany guys in black clothes and handsome and glamourous to a degree. Franz Ferdinand were sharp; they had moves and catchy songs [laughs]. And good on them. They were all powerful units in their own way, those bands. We were too sketchy to fit in. We couldn’t get it together enough to be that professional. I saw a video the other day, we were supporting The Fall at The Concord in Brighton. It was a good gig, but the last 10 minutes was like Charlie Chaplin meets Sid Vicious,” he half laughs, half sighs. ‘It’s all feedback and Woody doing a drum solo, but half the band are doing bad acrobatics and there’s a weird comedy element of throwing things around and falling over. I’m not surprised it wasn’t for everyone. We were 100% committed to what we were doing in that moment, discordant and odd as it was. It was like, maybe this will open up something new!”

As a fan of The Fall, he is conflicted by the increasing number of bands emerging exhibiting a distinctly Fall-like sound.

“I love The Fall, I think they are a magnificent thing,” he states. “Suddenly, as soon as he died, it was cool to be like The Fall. It’s really weird. I can’t tell if that’s good or not. I’m completely on the fence. I think ‘why not’? They’re a good band so why not be like them? But then it’s like ‘you’re ripping them off’. And then I just have an argument in my head.

“It's like Nirvana at the moment. They’ve never gone out of fashion but certainly they are pretty cool again. I was a big Nirvana fan, so you think ‘great’. But then you see some really mainstream American teenage pop person and they’re all in Nirvanas t-shirts. It’s a bit weird.

You go on YouTube and search Nirvana and it’s all cool shit. There are some really weird live gigs, at really big events where he’s being fucking weird, in a good way as well. I got into them through Sub Pop, Mudhoney and stuff like that. Then Nevermind came out, which was really good and I remember being really sad when he died. I was really emotionally involved with it. They were one of the first new bands I discovered for myself, rather than Sonic Youth, Pixies Roxy Music, Julian Cope, who were introduced to me by other people. Julian Cope is up there with Kurt Cobain in terms of keeping it real.”

During our conversation about the legacy of Nirvana, the 2015 documentary Cobain: Montage Of Heck comes up (he “wasn’t that impressed”) and the new ‘golden age’ of documentary films. Would he and the band be open to the prospect of a Sea Power documentary film to mark the first two decades of the band?

“There’s been one! It was only on our first album at the time,” he says. “It was a local TV station in Brighton. It was hilarious. Although I wouldn’t really want people to see it! If someone could do it well I’d love it. It could be… [exhales] It’s on a knife edge that one! It could go one way or the other. Maybe a bad one would even be funny. If there’s anyone out there… Who knows? It’s difficult making a good film about a band. There aren’t many.

“I’d like to do more film soundtrack stuff, but no one asks us! We won a BAFTA and we still haven’t been approached by any other computer game people, let alone Netflix or Danny Boyle!. But we’re so capable at the moment. I think we’re pretty good [laughs]. We might be shit again in a year and falling apart! I love film soundtracks, but if nothing happens there’s plenty of other stuff to get on with.”

For now, Everything Was Forever and an upcoming tour is very much the central focus for Sea Power. But as ever, the prospect of the unexpected is never too far away. And for fans of the band, they wouldn’t have it any other way.