Sea Power's signature brand of sepia-toned post-rock has always carried with it a considerable measure of nostalgia, but with Sea of Brass, they may have finally reached official faded wartime postcard status. Released in conjunction with a live DVD of the same name, Sea of Brass sees the East Sussex collective revisiting eight songs from their back catalog and sprucing them up with a full brass orchestra. The studio version of the LP features the Cheshire-based Fodens Band, founded in 1900 thank you very much, while the concert album/DVD, which was filmed at the esteemed London music hall the Barbican, relies on the talents of the Redbridge Brass Band. Weighted toward the group's more meandering, slow to midtempo material, Sea of Brass has more in common with film-related Sea Power works like Man of Aran and From the Sea to the Land Beyond than it does the nervy post-punk emissions of Decline of British Sea Power or the roaring, stadium-ready indie rock of Do You Like Rock Music? While the overall effect isn't completely sleep-inducing, it's far from festive, with only the knotty "Atom" and the propulsive "Machineries of Joy," and to a lesser extent the quietly majestic "Great Skua," boasting enough firepower to cut through the well-meaning torpor of much of the proceedings. The brass in question swells and sways capably throughout, but ultimately feels like window-dressing, never fully delivering the arm hair-raising crescendo that one would expect from an army of cornets, trombones, and euphoniums, though this is mostly the fault of the source material, which ultimately lacks the structural boldness with which to support such finery.