British Sea Power — Man Of Aran

Are these guys collectively feeling the pressure of diminishing critical returns since 2003's The Decline Of The British Sea Power? Is it career stagnation that caused them to take this complete musical turn and put out a mainly instrumental album? Because it's a really bad move.

For a band known for their epic storytelling, jettisoning almost all of the vocals (and thus the storytelling lyrics) seems suicidal. Replacing them with bland, innocuous elevator music is even a bigger misstep.

The album begins very quietly with the title track — so quietly, in fact, that I was reaching for the stereo wondering if I had the volume way down. Nope.

Things didn't really pick up from there. There are finally some vocals by the third song and 17-minute mark of the CD, "Come Wander With Me," but it's too little too late for this debacle.

Surprisingly, things actually go from bad to worse with the directionless "Tiger King" and Man Of Aran hits rock bottom on "Spearing The Sunfish," another too-long track filled with more noise than a Sonic Youth experimental side-project.

The band temporarily rights the sinking ship with a trio of pleasant tracks — "Conneely Of The West," "The North Sound" and "Woman Of Aran." Unfortunately, it's not worth it for the listener who has to sit through seven mind-numbing songs to get some slight reward.

Man Of Aran is the sort of trite that one associates with Trans Am, not the usually quirky British Sea Power.

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