Since the bursting of the Britpop bubble, Ocean Colour Scene have trundled along in some weird kind of limbo – adored by some, despised by others and passing most by. Yet while Oasis and Blur seem to lurch from crisis to crisis, the third biggest band of the time have actually played it right.
A certain downsizing has taken place certainly but in its stead has come a greater degree of artistic freedom. Their last record North Atlantic Drift was a neat little thing and despite its unwieldy title, A Hyperactive Workout For The Flying Squad is perhaps their most measured release to date.
For a start the electric guitars are mainly left at home, replaced by a new range of sounds. ‘I Love You’ builds on a mournful cello into an orchestral epic, ‘This Day Should Last Forever’ is a folk cousin of Van’s ‘Bright Side Of The Road’ featuring fiddle, mandolin and accordion and ‘God’s World’ throbs with keyboards and funky beats. It doesn’t all work – the jazzy ‘Move Things Over’ is a disaster – but it proves that they aren’t content just to bang out ‘The Riverboat Song’ for the rest of their career. This forward thinking reaches a peak on the closing ‘My Time’, a gentle dub number featuring a sweet vocal presumably from drummer Oscar.
It’s all pretty brave – the faithful may scratch their heads and the detractors probably won’t even listen but just maybe they’ll find themselves reaching a whole new audience and who’d have put a bet on that?