I had a feeling I was going to like The Winchester Club. It was the tracklisting for Britannia Triumphant that did it – three songs, but clocking in at over thirty-five minutes? This is a band on my wavelength, I thought.
Don’t get me wrong, short punchy pop songs have their place. But I’ve got more than a passing fondness for lengthy epics; they give both the band and myself a chance to fully explore the themes and possibilities of a piece of music, providing space (and a ladder) to climb inside and wander around the cavern of your mind for a while. My suspicions were correct – Britannia Triumphant is a spectacular display of post-rock soundscaping.
But The Winchester Club aren’t just copyists. They’ve found their own individual twist on the genre by borrowing from both ends of the spectrum, balancing the icy fragility and aloofness of clean guitar against jazzy free-form martial drumming and moody bass that borders on full-on rock.
Every minute of all three tracks is poised, with the tension between the weighty and the delicate producing a musical tension that captivates the ear and produces a meditative effect – a phenomenon tacitly acknowledged by The Winchester Club in “Settle Down”, whose gentle echoed arpeggios and languorous drumming are set against the calm measured voice of a meditation guidance recording and a distant distorted e-bow glissando on the bass.
And don’t be fooled by the title – Britannia Triumphant is no paean to the glories of Empire. Nor is it especially triumphant in tone; quite the opposite, in fact. These three tracks ooze a melancholic and introspective atmosphere quite at odds with notions of patriotism, a sense of finality and fin de siècle, a defiantly decaying decadence like the band playing on as the ship goes down.
Suffice to say that fans of three-minute gems of cheery pop will consider The Winchester Club pretentious and overblown. But devoted explorers of the post-rock hinterlands will discover much to fall in love with – the sound may not be triumphant, but the music itself is a triumph.
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