By Peter De Vries, Staff Contributor
Belle & Sebastian Write About Love is not only more than a worthy successor to 2007’s The Life Pursuit, but also a demonstration of how the band can weave the free-spirited, easygoing and slickly produced sounds they’ve been making since 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress into something that feels fondly familiar but never hackneyed.
Fans of Belle & Sebastian’s earlier albums should proceed with caution. This isn’t the band re-examining the brooding melodies, dry wit and sexual frustration of 1997’s irreplaceable If You’re Feeling Sinister. Fans of that era will likely continue to feel alienated by Write About Love, since the soft, acoustic “Read the Blessed Pages” and the gentle “Ghost of Rockschool” are probably as close as they will come to familiar ground.
“It’s hard to form a good opinion if you’re going to look at me that way,” sings Stuart Murdoch, as if to press the point that Belle & Sebastian are in a different place now and have been for a long time.
With this disclaimer in mind, the album is a cleverly-paced mix of pretty ballads like Murdoch and guest singer Norah Jones’s duet “Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John” and more up-tempo numbers like “I Want the World to Stop.”
The album hardly falters at all until the “Sunday’s Pretty Icons,” the album’s final track, which feels oddly out of place after the pleasant harmonies of “I Can See Your Future.”
To the band’s credit, the slower tunes never feel too cheesy, and while the word “twee” can imply excessive whimsy and saccharine sentimentality, the bouncier tunes seldom if ever feel twee in that sense.
For instance, “I’m Not Living in the Real World” is memorable for its quick, quirky harmonies and the chirpiness of the band members whistling over Stevie Jackson’s vocals. It sounds very close to something A.C. Newman and the New Pornographers might attempt on a particularly sunny day.
Write About Love is the sound of Belle & Sebastian doing the best they can with what they have given the state they’re in right now. New listeners could do far worse than to start here, while older fans should open their minds to appreciate the album for the treat it is.
Belle & Sebastian Write About Love comes out Oct. 12.
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