Popcorn Noises

Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love

“I know a spell / that could make you well…write about love, it could be in any form / hand it to me in the morning.”

Instructional tone like this is, to say the least, uncommon in Belle and Sebastian songs, so when Stuart Murdoch opens the title track to the band’s new album by saying he can fix you, it’s best not to brush past it. Over the years, his defining literary preoccupation with sympathy and outsider romance has followed a few twists and turns as the band has democratized and become a tightly-knit ensemble, but to most of us it’s always been what Belle and Sebastian is really ‘about.’ The lines here cast Murdoch as a doctor, a mystical healer, and a teacher (he also becomes a minister later on with “I know the way / get on your skinny knees and pray”), someone with experience and grownup know-how that can be shared with all the lost mundane souls he’s spent his career chronicling. It’s not a universal change in tone—the rest of Write About Love is more conversational—but it’s a signpost of the attitudes and concerns of this record.

The term I’m tip-toeing around here is ‘middle age.’ Belle and Sebastian have been releasing records for fifteen years and most of the members have probably hit or are pushing 40 by now, so it’s no surprise that they might have financial stability and work-a-day boredom on the brain. Actress Carey Mulligan sings a guest vocal on the aforementioned title track all about how she hates her office job and goes up to the roof at lunch to write about a fantasy lover. Sarah Martin starts the album with the music-loving line “Make me dance, I want to surrender,” but finds that joy continually hampered and encroached upon by cash woes (“We don’t have the money / money makes the wheels and the world go round”). Guitarist Stevie Jackson has an “every day is Monday,” this-is-not-how-I-imagined-my-life moment on the rollicking power pop jam “I’m Not Living in the Real World.” And during the half hour variety show the band released to promote Love, Murdoch leads a roundtable discussion with other musicians on the difficulties of making a living with records. On “Calculating Bimbo,” he offers more advice: “Save your pennies careful / let both blue eyes be watchful / it’s best to forget freedom / it’s best to be enslaved.”

So yeah, it seems the Glasgowian poster children are feeling a little light in their wallets, but hopefully it’s also evident from the last paragraph that there’s an egalitarian sense of unity among them on this record. In fact, the full title of it is Belle and Sebastian Write About Love, a statement of purpose and self-awareness. Writing about love isn’t just their advice for coping with the daily grind, it is what they—all of them—do together. Their last full-length, 2006’s The Life Pursuit, found them in loose funk/soul territory, sounding limber but occasionally lacking cohesion, and Love sounds airtight by comparison. They’re still pulling from 60s soul and meshing it with early 70s guitar pop, but they’re doing so in the most balanced and orderly way possible. Each instrument is given plenty of its own space while still participating in the song, and Murdoch, Martin, and Jackson take turns leading and backing each other up across the entire album.

A few detours still pop up, though, and some naturally work better than others. “Read the Blessed Pages” is an acoustic folk ballad that skews more pastoral, medieval, and ‘English’ than I thought B&S would ever go. It would be more at home at the end of a Decemberists record. “Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John” is a well-written smoky country duet that’s sorta ruined by Norah Jones. She handles her part capably (which is to say ‘without much soul’), but sticks out like a sore thumb amidst all the Scottish brogues and finely-tuned pastiche. At least Murdoch isn’t faking a southern accent, y’know?

Not that Belle and Sebastian deserve a free pass, but at this point it does feel a little silly to spend a lot of time picking apart their few missteps. I doubt Love will be many people’s introduction to the band, so if you’re the kind of person who’s going to like them, you already do and will enjoy this record for what it is. But it’s comforting to know that taking a couple years off hasn’t dulled their sensibilities and good to be reminded of why they’re worth keeping around. If you feel that way too, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you sending a few bucks their way.