Music Box | Belle & Sebastian

Mike Newmark Assistant Arts Editor

Belle & Sebastian
The Life Pursuit
[Matador]
4 out of 5 stars

Reductive as it may sound, recent decades have musical signifiers that define the eras that spawned them: the ’70s had disco; the ’80s had synth-pop; the ’90s had grunge. If you didn’t look very hard, you might conclude that the ’00s lack a musical style to call its own, but in fact, many of today’s rock musicians have made their mark by culling from genres past: post-punk, folk-pop, new wave, garage rock and surf rock, just to name a few.

Forced to give an example of this trend, you could do a lot worse than Belle & Sebastian. They blazed onto the scene in 1996 with their first wide release, If You’re Feeling Sinister, a winsome folk-pop pastiche that channeled The Field Mice, Nick Drake (in a big way), and Simon & Garfunkel. But even past-dependent bands need to evolve, and after treading water on 2000’s Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, they bounced back in 2003 with the sonically rich Dear Catastrophe Waitress, and again in 2006 with The Life Pursuit—an album even more varied and energetic than its predecessor.

Playing “Spot the Influence” on The Life Pursuit is pretty easy, if you’ve been following your music history. The carefree, eclectic spirit of The Smiths echoes throughout the album, most prominently on the sprightly “We Are the Sleepyheads” and the infectiously catchy “Funny Little Frog.” There are shout-outs to ’50s rockabilly à la Bill Haley (“The Blues Are Still Blue”), road trip-style Americana (“Another Sunny Day”) and even Motown soul (“Song for Sunshine”), reminiscent of Marvin Gaye’s more uptempo numbers.

The Life Pursuit transcends mere idol worship, however, due to Belle & Sebastian’s ever-apparent modernist skew. “White Collar Boy” is the obvious exemplar: it’s backboned by a stomping beat lifted from The Clash’s “London Calling,” and its jangly, bouncy guitars recall those oh-so-cheery performances on American Bandstand. But they take advantage of modern instrumentation by incorporating a squelchy Korg in lieu of a bass, which makes sense in this flashy context. Additionally, the subject matter concerning an unceremonious white collar crime stands in blatant contrast to the song’s instrumental cuteness. Think Stereolab in full Marxist mode and you’ve got the idea.

Between 2000 and 2006, Belle & Sebastian transformed from a collaborative outfit to what is now essentially a Stuart Murdoch solo project. As with Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Murdoch serves as principle songwriter, lyricist, vocalist and guitarist. He’s more willing to take left turns than the rest of the band, and while his R&B singing comes off a little awkwardly, he has an unusually high success rate when he stretches himself.

“Another Sunny Day,” for example, is prime alternative country-rock, its driving rhythm and twanging guitars recalling the sunny, expansive highways of Nashville. As if that weren’t enough, he’s complemented by Waitress producer Trevor Horn, who has an intuitive feel for the band and lends them an appropriately crisp sound.

The Life Pursuit is Belle & Sebastian’s most energetic release, and therein lies its only flaw. If someone had described Belle & Sebastian as “energetic” circa 1996, you probably would have laughed, but after ten years, the band has moved fully out of the bedroom and into the world at large. The problem is that the most valuable introspection often occurs in the quiet confines of the bedroom, and for all of The Life Pursuit’s giddy joy, most of its appeal lies right on the surface and doesn’t especially reward deeper listening. If that makes The Life Pursuit slightly less masterful than Dear Catastrophe Waitress, it also firmly cements their exciting new direction, and heralds Belle & Sebastian as some of the finest torch-bearers of the 2000’s zeitgeist.