The Life Pursuit

by

Belle and Sebastian

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Long after Radiohead decided that traditional rock songs were "beneath" them and started their weird sojurn into God-knows-what and the pop-punk exoplosion of the late Nineties wilted on the vine, very little about modern music gets me excited enough to buy an album totally cold with no advance listens. Apart from Weezer last year and Death Cab for Cutie recently, I really haven't purchased a new release by a current band in a long time. But that all changed last week when I got "The Life Pursuit".

If you have the 2003 "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" disc (or the harder-to-find "Books" single from the following year) the new direction of B&S probably won't be much of a shock for you. It's not that the band has "turned their back" on what got them the devoted cult following they earned with more laid-back releases like "Tigermilk" or "If You're Feeling Sinister", but simply that they've opened their musical pallette to include Seventies glam and pomp (well, their versions of the two). And the combination is infectious if you let it in.

Sure, fans of their more acoustic material will feel betrayed, and I can sympathize with them if they feel Stuart Murdoch and the band are forgetting their roots. But it's senseless to hold Belle and Sebastian to a fixed style, when there have been hints of this kind of musical direction in previous releases (anyone recall "Electronic Renaissance"'s odd position on the Tigermilk record?). What's more, like any good artists the group brings something unexpected and new to the styles they've embraced.

That's called true artistry, folks. If the record wasn't half as enjoyable as it is, you might have a point.

But songs like "The Blues are Still Blue", "We are The Sleeyheads", "Funny Little Frog", and "White Collar Boy" are immensely likable on repeat listens, and the gems that emerge like "Mornington Crescent" and "Act of the Apostles (Parts I and II)" roll around in your head long after you've removed the disc from your CD player (which won't be for a while, of course). This is good music from a great band who continue to defy the expectations that were placed upon them a decade ago and still retain that special something which makes them a force to be reckoned with.

So pick up "The Life Pursuit" and enjoy listening to it on repeat, as there isn't a bad track on the entire disc. Rock music rarely gets this enjoyable or listenable these days, so treasures like "Pursuit" should be acknowledged. Otherwise, it's just the same old crap but with a different album cover. And that's the artistic kiss of death.

Be it the viability of 3rd parties in American politics, or the profundity of writers like Jack Kerouac and Nietzsche, I was wrong about a lot of things in college. It is only after descending from the purportedly ivory towers of higher education that I have truly realized things like the value of regular bathing, pants not made of denim, and sleep.

Sure, sure, the heady mix of barracks-style housing, and fresh-granted personal freedom clouds many young Americans' judgments. Only the lucky ones escape their undergraduate years without dabbling in creative facial hair or misappropriating student loans for that bitchin' pink flying v the dude down the hall is lookin to sell off. But not all judgements made during these troubled years are entirely off-base.

Case in point: During my tenure with the student run newspaper at my alma mater, a small private school in the Northeast that the lawyers tell me I should identify no further, I reviewed Belle & Sebastian's last studio album, 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress. I wrote at the time that "Dear Catastrophe Waitress shows B&S ready to embark on the great white whale hunt for a hit single. If this album is any indication, they have a great chance of succeeding. Unfortunately, if this album is any indication, it will come at the expense of the qualities that made them special in the first place."

And here we are in the brave new world of 2006. What has become of Belle & Sebastian? Their latest single, "Funny Little Frog" has charted higher in England than anything they've yet released, and their latest album has been released in the midst of media attention from previously unlikely sources.

"The Life Pursuit" is shaping up to be a success in all the businessy definitions of the term, but the real question is how does it sound? The answer: Like the Kinks. Or T-Rex. But unfortunately not like Belle & Sebastian.

It's a good record, I guess. A pleasant record to be sure. Stuart Murdoch's poison pen lyrics are still up to snuff, if that's any consolation. Only occasionly does his delicate voice sound truly oddly pumped up in front of the mix, like your most mild mannered friend going unexpectedly balls out at a karaoke bar. And, as he shows on "The Blues Are Still Blue," Stuart does an uncanny impersonation of mid-70s Ray Davies.

That song and the fuzzy glam-pop of "White Collar Boy" are highlights of the record, but it's hard to shake the feeling that I've heard it all before. And Tony Hoffer's production, which seems to involve getting the individual players to disappear as far inside the arrangements as possible, just magnifies what problems there are. When the songs aren't up to snuff, they can't just coast on the sound of an original band the way some lesser B & S tracks have in the past. Instead, things like the ill-informed white funk of "Song for Sunshine" crash and burn in a way the band didn't used to be capable of.

When "Dress Up In You" comes on halfway through the record with its mournful trumpet, brushed snare, and soft vocal, it sounds like an album cut off of The Boy With The Arab Strap. But in this company it's a breath of fresh air, and just about the only thing that doesn't sound like a dress up game involving the band and a closet full of seventies pop records.

......Nicholas S. McGaw