Description
Time has revealed Belle & Sebastian's reputation for a rather wimpy indieness to be more the result of their relative inexperience than any real predilection for twee juvenilia. On their seventh album, The Life Pursuit, we find these errant Scots further building on the surprisingly muscular, Trevor Horn-produced sound of 2003's Dear Cata
Time has revealed Belle & Sebastian's reputation for a rather wimpy indieness to be more the result of their relative inexperience than any real predilection for twee juvenilia. On their seventh album, The Life Pursuit, we find these errant Scots further building on the surprisingly muscular, Trevor Horn-produced sound of 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress, delving into the sound of `70s glam and tarrying ever further from the winsome folk with which they made their name. "White Collar Boy" bumps along on Glitter Band rhythms, vocalist Stuart Murdoch -forget the patchy democracy of mid-period B&S albums; Stuart is the leader here - narrating a tale of petty theft and chain-gang romance with a feisty charisma, while "The Blues Are Still Blue" is a stylish doff of the cap to T.Rex and the Television Personalities, albeit one that evokes the spirit both, but copies neither. And oh! What foul mouths. Whether Murdoch's announcing "They are hypocrites, so fuck them too" before a warm brass break on "Dress Up In You", or telling the tale of a teenage tearwaway on "Sukie In The Graveyard" ("She liked to hang out in the art-school/She didn't enrol, but she wiped the floor with all the arseholes"), it's the sound of a Belle & Sebastian that's matured in the most agreeably immature way.--Louis Pattison
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