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Don't Be a Fool, It's (Not) 1995

On the liner-notes to the debut Belle and Sebastian album, 1996's Tigermilk, songsmith Stuart Murdoch —working under a thinly-veiled cloak of roman à clef character-creating— admitted that he not only wrote all of his best songs in 1995, but that most of them had the phrase '1995' in the lyrics.

That was 15 years ago, but, for Belle and Sebastian fans old and new, it feels like yesterday; kept eternal on those near-perfect early records.


The 'classic' period, for most fans, spans Tigermilk, 1996's second LP If You're Feeling Sinister, and the three EPs (Dog on Wheels, Lazy Line Painter Jane, 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds of Light) they issued in 1997. Everything that's come since has been a variation on disappointing; from the not-really-disappointing (1998's The Boy with the Arab Strap, 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress), to the really-disappointing (2000's Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant).

Write About Love seems destined to be regarded more as the latter than the former. Its evocative title evokes a little too much: there something self-conscious in its command to the band. Where, back in those mythical salad days of 1995, when Murdoch was "was sick and alone, songs came out fully formed," he told the New York Times.

But, along the way, as that magical initial wellspring dried out, Murdoch had to consider what he was writing about. And, having grown tired of the sadness that defined the band's early days —both on and off the pitch— the songwriter decided, as long as he was consciously choosing, to pen happy tunes.

About girls. To, in short, write about love.

So What Am I So Afraid Of?

Write About Love is, then, essentially a continuation of what the band were up to on Dear Catastrophe Waitress and 2006's The Life Pursuit, and what Murdoch was presiding over with his God Help the Girl record. You could, indeed, call this the 'writing about love' era; the years in which the tunes have worn a more studied, professional, ambitious air.

And the eighth Belle and Sebastian LP is everything you expect, now: bright, bold productions, guitars glinting like gold, waves of analogue organs, sweeping orchestrations, brass stings, band-members sharing around vocal duties during songs, and a relentlessly upbeat approach. Everything sounds big and boisterous; from the indefatigable "I'm Not Living in the Real World" to the toe-tapping, bass-grooving "Come on Sister," to the title-track, a duet with actress Carey Mulligan that sounds like about half the tunes of The Life Pursuit. Even the sole Murdoch-on-an-acoustic sad song becomes a big production number, when a flock of tin whistles and new-age keyboards sounds arise from its mists mid-stride.

It all sounds ever-so-much like you'd expect a Belle and Sebastian record to in 2010, except for one wrinkle: the album's best song, "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John," is a slow-tempo, adult-contempo ballad in which Murdoch duels with none other than Norah Jones. At first, his nervy, reedy, indie-boy throat sounds comic when placed against her raspy, smoky, belting, but somehow it starts to make perfect sense; and Jackson's spot-on guitar work suggests he's been wanting to play on Muscle Shoals-esque numbers for years.

"Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John," takes the aesthetic of God Help the Girl to its logical conclusion: this is B&S gone MOR. And, in a sign of the times both utterly depressing and weirdly hopeful, it shines a light on where the band could be headed next.

Record Label: Matador
Release Date: October 12, 2010