Photo courtesy of Matador Records
Belle & Sebastian: The Life Pursuit
Matador Records
$15.98
1) Act of the Apostle
2) Another Sunny Day
3) White Collar Boy
4) The Blues Are Still Blue
5) Dress Up In You
6) Sukie in the Graveyard
7) We Are the Sleepyheads
8) Song for Sunshine
9) Funny Little Frog
10) To Be Myself Complete
11) Act of the Apostle IIl
12) For the Price of a Cup of Teay
13) Mornington Crescent
In the classic film High Fidelity (hands-down the best movie about music ever made), one of the defining scenes involves Jack Black’s obnoxious record store clerk Barry arguing with John Cusack, who plays Rob, the owner of the store.
Rob and the other employee had been listening to a mellow Belle & Sebastian record when all of the sudden Barry puts on the happy “Walkin’ On Sunshine.” Eventually Rob angrily stops the tape and throws it back across the room at Barry, who looks back at him indignantly and says, “Hey buddy, I was just trying to cheer us up. So go ahead, put on some old sad bastard music, see if I care.”
Barry was right, at least in a sense. Anyone that’s followed Belle & Sebastian’s career can knows that in their early days, the band was more fit to be listened to (or contemplated) on a rainy day following a breakup than during a summertime joyride.
It wasn’t until 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress that the Scottish seven-piece showed their more playful side. The record wasn’t any less mellow or even necessarily “happy,” but it seemed a more ambitious and a little more lighthearted.
The Life Pursuit , the group’s latest album, follows in the same vain and, while it’s not their best album, it’s certainly their most diverse.
The band (main songwriter and bandleader Stuart Murdoch, as well as multi-instrumentalists Mick Cooke, Richard Colburn, Chris Geddes, Stevie Jackson, Sarah Martin and Bobby Kildea) seems to have been listening to a lot of different music while composing this album, because it’s full of different sounds from bluesy classic rock to Motown to twangy country.
Starting things off is “Act Of The Apostle,” a piano-driven pop song that doesn’t really possess any outstanding qualities except a decent melody. It’s nothing special, but it’s a perfect introduction for what’s to come.
Beginning with “White Collar Boy,” the entire middle section of the album features some diverse songwriting. The aforementioned track rollicks along with a synth-line and jangly guitars. “The Blues Are Still Blue” follows with a guitar melody that’s a curious combination of T. Rex glam and Rolling Stones blues rock.
The group seems to have put less focus on the guitar for this album, instead putting lots of emphasis on the piano and the bass guitar. That isn’t to say there isn’t some good guitar playing. On the contrary, songs like “We Are The Sleepyheads” and “The Blues Are Still Blue” feature some excellent guitar work from Jackson and Cooke.
But it’s obvious that scorching guitar work was not the point of the music on this album. “Song For Sunshine” sounds as if the bassist and keyboardist from Funkadelic began jamming with the group, while “Funny Little Frog” is almost entirely driven by Murdoch’s piano and Kildea’s bass.
Murdoch’s lyrics have always been whimsical and sometimes even “cute;” this album is no different. Some of the songs are simply stories like “Sukie In The Graveyard,” which is about, appropriately enough, a girl named Sukie who liked to hang out in a graveyard.
On other songs, however, Murdoch takes a more personal approach. “Another Sunny Day” begins happily, with Murdoch singing about all the happy memories he has with a woman amidst a happy melody, jangly guitars and bouncy bass. By the end, however, he is reeling, asking, “So what went wrong? It was a lie, it crumbled apart/ Ghost figures of the past, present, future, haunting the heart.”
At other times he is less depressed and more sentimental. “You’re my picture on the wall / You’re my vision in the hall… / You’re my girl, you don’t even know it / You’re the funny little frog in my throat,” he sings in “Funny Little Frog.”
The bottom line in all of this is that Belle & Sebastian have made an entirely pleasing album. It isn’t necessarily “new,” but that’s fine: it’s a pop album, more or less, with some interesting bits of everything else brilliantly thrown in for good measure.
It also proves, once and for all, that Belle & Sebastian aren’t just for sad bastards anymore. Oh, Jack Black, how foolishly misguided you were.