Whither the BSP hype machine?

As absolutely lovely as some American Indie bands are, in the end, I'm always drawn to indie bands across the pond who are drinking some magic elixir of innovation. Okay, so that may by a bit of a stretch, but most excellent American indie bands often sound like they're Anglophiles. It used to be that I was an exclusive British Rock man, that any new American music didn't excite me, but with my discovery of Jimmy Eat World and Death Cab in 2002, I realized there were some Americans out there making excellent music. So, I like American bands again after about a 5 year hiatus. Neat, right? Yeah, but then I go out and buy British Sea Power's latest. And you sit there and think, "Why aren't these guys huge on the indie scene?" Now, most "rock" bands use guitars and they use guitars in similar fashions. Chords chords chords maybe a little solo here, a little riff there, chords chords chords. The thought struck me as I was listening to this latest BSP album that I haven't heard a guitar create it's own distinct melody line in a long time. The lead guitar typically is not mired in chords. It's doing it's own awesome thing throughout the song. It's reminiscent of Bernard Butler-era Suede (see We Are the Pigs for an example of the guitar I'm talking about) or John Squire of the Stone Roses. It's so refreshing to hear this. Now, I won't go so far as to say that Indie bands are wussy, because Jimmy Eat World is not wussy (granted they're major label now) and the Decemberists, while being wussy, still have some magical guitar moments on that epic track 2 of the Crane's Wife as everything is caught up in the maelstrom of guitarness. But there isn't that guitar line that just cuts through all the white noise to carve out it's own distinct place in the song. And I love it when that happens. More often then not, in an Indie song, this is a piano line (although the piano line is generally more repetitive then the cutting guitar line). Now, I will say that Coldplay's guitars are rather cool in many ways when they are finally unleashed (someone please tell me why Coldplay even deals in boring tracks like "Trouble" when they excel at tracks like "White Shadows"), but British Sea Power trumps them. So, I'm going to take my stand here. British Sea Power. Is. Awesome. Close Quote. Someone please start the pretty hype machine for them.

I believe I've previously mentioned the Levellers as being a band that gets no respect around these parts. I think the same is true of the Standard. Have I mentioned them before? Illegal copies of Wire Post to Wire should be everywhere. I have no idea why they are not.