Belle and Sebastian
The Life Pursuit

THE REVIEW

Belle And Sebastian – The Life Pursuit (Rough Trade/Matador, 2006)

If we want to know, and love, Belle And Sebastian, we must go back to “If You’re Feeling Sinister” or “The Boy With The Arab Strap”. The raw beauty of “Tigermilk” will also do. There they still tremble with candor.

The Glasgow ensemble, led by the talented songwriter Stuart Murdoch, with heightened sensitivity and melancholy, captured, especially in “If You’re Feeling Sinister,” a bit of the beauty that will save the world according to Dostoevsky (“The Idiot,” “The Brothers Karamazov” @[Lauretta]).

Their promising Folk Pop, Indie, since the late nineties, moves with great credibility, among gentle, fragile and gloomy atmospheres, with sighs, but also looming and nimble rhythms. An extraordinary introversion @[Luludia] pervades the lyrics, as if Murdoch “felt” always doubly, first and too much, enough to assert with Rilke that "feeling is fading.”

With “The Boy With The Arab Strap”, the album of public consensus @[Pinhead], they had become more orchestral and baroque, still starting from an acoustic setup, enriched with electric instruments and the brass section. Then came Trevor Horn (with “Dear Catastrophe Waitress”). And, ten years after their debut, the work completes with the move to the city of angels for this seventh, and intentionally “titanic,” endeavor: “The Life Pursuit”. It decidedly embraces a more exportable Pop Rock. Like moving from pastel watercolors to one colored with fluorescent highlighters...

The style is not completely misrepresented. I don't find it even their worst work. Of course, if we were used to a poetic imagery close to Drake, Felt @[JonathanCoe] and Smiths, here, instead, one will evoke T-Rex, the transformative Reed, and even shyly, Prince. Glam and Black Music, a certain danceability and fluidity, easily approachable. Producer Tony Hoffman (Thrills, Supergrass, Beck of Guero, Air of 10000Hz) leaves a mark. The combo was even in a revamped formation, without Isobel Campbell and Stuart David. The album, very pragmatic, is slightly cloying overall, but constructive, not (too) creative, but in individual instances, it can boast beautiful pages.

Even “Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like A Peasant”, a rushed work, was not devoid of commendable insights. Here, compared to that, internal cohesion is not missing. In the end, after a decade of career, trying new paths is not strange. Their stylistic mark does not seem distorted. Certainly, without all that preceded it, this LP would be hardly representative of the Scottish combo.

However, they still know how to make heavenly melodies, and here they try to be captivating, with a bit more sun after so many variegated clouds.

“Another Sunny Day”, cheerful and bouncing rhythm, clean jingle-jangle guitar chimes and Murdoch's expressive, expressive singing. The lyrics traverse the wounds of a couple, and a speck in the eye heals at least one.

“To Be Myself Completely”, a masterpiece of piano hammering, proclaimed by Stevie Jackson’s singing, would have been perfect to include in the “Arab Strap” setlist. It leaves you breathless! “Though we say goodbye and wonder / What's to know and who's to blame / But to be myself completely I will love you just the same”.

“We Are The Sleepyhead”, is a kind of pseudo Funk, sinuous, with pleasant and shimmering choruses. Urgent, it flows swiftly, with the leader’s elegant singing and a very elusive female counterpoint. It illuminates and makes the dull laziness of the morning it speaks about shine, among "biblical verses," "streets" and alleyways, more than searching for "truth," contemplating, in the most indolent drowsiness, the “moment’s beauty.”

These pieces are affable, exciting, summery, they call you in almost, unusually, insolently, and after so much emotional fragility, we can only agree to this mild provocation by Murdoch and associates. Too much sensitivity is a condemnation; perhaps they have sought to free themselves from it without obviously falling into cynicism. The best answer is provided by George Bernard Shaw @[IlConte]. “The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor, every time he sees me he takes my new measurements. The others go on with their old measurements and expect me to do the same.”

Then, I persuade myself, this is indeed the right perspective. @[Takanibu].