The Winchester Club - Britannia Triumphant
"Britannia Triumphant, the most recent release by England's The Winchester Club, came out a few years ago, but I only stumbled across it recently.
The Winchester Club describe themselves as "epic" at several points on their website.
I'm instantly skeptical of any band comfortable enough to affix such a glowing adjective to themselves.
Fortunately for The Winchester Club, they do a pretty good job of justifying their. presumption.
The Winchester Club have a pretty smooth, droning, atmospheric sound, anchored by some pretty thick bass (or maybe a keyboard?). In a lot of ways, I feel the bass tone actually kind of makes this record. It's real fuzzy, like something you'd hear in a stoner rock band, but then it's anchoring this somewhat more mellow, droning music.
The best song by far is the third and last song, "But There is No Space." That's where the whole sound kind of comes together for. IT's real subtle, with the various parts building up on each other to a somewhat rocking climax.
If I had a criticism of this record, however, it would be that the climactic points of the songs aren't quite climactic enough, if that makes sense. I want to reach in the record and flip on someone's distortion channel, or something. They tend to need another layer or something to separate them from the rest of the song more.
Overall, though, this is a pretty enjoyable trip down drone-rock lane, and if you like Godspeedy-type stuff you'll probably dig it.
Here they are live, but it's kind of a boring video, so...
That's more exciting, right?
