The Life Pursuit — Belle & Sebastian
Matador
2006
Rating:


Belle & Sebastian's journey from twee to full-blooded indie rockers either took 11 years or six minutes, depending on how you're keeping score.

Since 1995's "Tigermilk," Belle & Sebastian have been the fey Glaswegians the indie kids have loved to hate, the band that "real" Brit indie rockers like Blur and Pulp probably beat up backstage during the 1990s. The band's sad songs about sad-sacks getting sacked by their girlfriends were so melancholy that it prompted "High Fidelity's" Rob Gordon to call it the kind of music he can "ignore."

That started to change in 2004 with the release of "You're Cover's Blown" off the "Books" EP. The song is unlike anything Belle & Sebastian had done before, with more punch than the entirety of "Dear Catastrophe Waitress." It's an epic of loneliness, sure, but the bassline is a thing of pure sex appeal, it borrows the main riff from the Doobie Brothers "Without Love" and it unfolds in movements, like Queen if Freddie Mercury was too shy to go out to the club instead of eager to put on ass-less leather chaps.

"The Life Pursuit," Belle & Sebastian's seventh album, extends the band's newfound tradition of aural greatness to match Stuart Murdoch's infinitely witty lyrics. This time around, Belle & Sebastian's sound simultaneously harkens all the way back to The Velvet Underground and, closer in time, The Shins.

The subject matter of opener "Act of Apostle Part 1" finds the band in lyrically familiar territory, with its story of the kind of sweet schoolgirl Belle & Sebastian listeners have always fallen in with and, in turn, always had break their hearts. But the sound is completely different. The beat comes in sounding all "Kokomo," and then piano notes on the low-end come in and the song turns into something that may have been playing in the background during the famous sex scene in the mod-tastic 1966 masterpiece "Blow-Up." During the chorus, when Murdoch sings "Oh, if I could make sense of it all! / I wish that I could sing / I'd stay in a melody / I would float along in my everlasting song" in supersonic harmony, it sends shivers down the spine.

Belle & Sebastian is just warming up. "Another Sunny Day" goes alt-country and "White Collar Boy's" crunchy, synthesized guitar sends the band into the realm of T. Rex-stomping glam, "Song for the Sunshine" is Stevie Wonder funk with a bright as heaven chorus, while "Sukie in the Graveyard" is more of the David Bowie vintage. "Sukie" is one of Murdoch's boldest concoctions. Its tale of a runaway who hangs out in a graveyard is almost something Lou Reed would've written, except for the "Schoolhouse Rock" organ and the searing guitar solo at its chewy center.

"Dress Up in You" is more purified Velvets. The melody is "Waiting for the Man" slowed down to a ballad, and Murdoch purrs an "All About Eve" plotline of a female singer calling a fan a loser, only to have that fan turn into a major actress. After claiming her rival couldn't "act [her] way out of a paper bag," Murdoch eventually sings, "I always loved you / You had a lot of style / I'd hate to see you on the pile / Of nearly made its / You've got the essence, dear / If I could have a second skin / I'd probably dress up in you."

By the time Murdoch proclaims "I'm a genius! / I'm a prod-i-gy!" on "Act of the Apostles Part 2," you may be inclined to agree. But the song doesn't stop there. The lyrics return Belle & Sebastian to the Catholic schoolgirl of "Part 1." The melody starts off as a twee shuffle, but, like the lyrics, it revisits "Part 1" as the girl attempts to find religion. After visiting a church and being told to "bugger off," the hook of "Part 1" is re-contextualized so that her spirituality becomes her devotion to music. "My Damascan Road," Murdoch sings, "is my transistor radio."

It's the most wonderful sentiment of an album full of them. Belle & Sebastian have spent 11 years pursuing their masterpiece. In "The Life Pursuit," they've finally found it.

Posted Thursday, March 2, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/belle.sebastian/life.pursuit