Seeland named themselves after a song by Neu!-- one of the most singular sounding (and ripped-off) bands of all time-- but until now they haven't much sounded like Neu! In many ways, this is a good thing, wonderful as Neu! were. Bands who name themselves after songs by other bands already often have a tendency to be glorified cover acts. Not so much with Seeland, whose two members (Tim Felton and Mike "Billy" Bainbridge) come from long-running bands (Broadcast and Plone) with distinct signatures of their own, and so their combined efforts bring together a number of sounds from roughly the same era as their namesake (early synth adventures, psychedelic rock, experimental electronic film and TV scores), making records where you can name the influences without necessarily using the word "homage" unflatteringly.
Seeland actually trot out Neu!'s motorik beat once, on "Black Dot, White Spider", the first song on How to Live, but most of the band's second album is much harder to pin down, its nostalgic sci-fi pop references more cleverly combined, thanks to Felton and Bainbridge's seemingly effortless ability to meld sounds from different musical spheres into catchy little wholes. Is it folk music if beat coffee shops had been bumping to the Forbidden Planet soundtrack? The British Invasion if Joe Meek had been as big an influence as Muddy Waters? The Beta Band with all the wooly psychedelic edges and bad jokes removed, leaving only a sleek but sorta anonymous retro tunefulness? Plone and Broadcast minus the disquieting touches that made their "childlike" music hover beguilingly on the edge of creepiness?
Unfortunately, that uniform cuddliness is actually one of the album's two big weaknesses. It's all very pretty, very lush, and exceedingly well executed on its own terms. But Seeland's songs are also so unflaggingly adorable and friendly and tightly constructed that you wind up longing for just a moment of abrasion or eeriness or chaos. They do one mood, gentle wide-eyed wonder set to slightly kitschy "futuristic" music, very well. But that one mood also wears you out in far less time than the album's 34 minutes. It also all sounds a hell of a lot like Seeland's first album Tomorrow Today, released just last year, which is wonderful for people completely charmed by this stuff and a bit of a "so what?" proposition for those who already got their fix a year ago.
The band's other, related stumbling block is that Tim Felton is pretty monochrome behind the mic, to the point where you wonder if an instrumental album might not have been a better showcase of the duo's skills. (At least How to Live wouldn't sound so much like Tomorrow Today then.) As a singer, Felton delivers great melodies with the same off-the-rack indie wistfulness on each of the album's 10 tracks, the vocal equivalent to the music's constant happy-sad vibe. His voice is acceptably pretty but not much more, and seriously lacking for dynamics, making How to Live feel repetitive despite the sparkling, slippery variety of backing tracks. Seeland's sound, full of bright and perfectly recreated period touches, has plenty of personality on its own. But if they're committed to writing songs, they still need to find a singer to match.
