Belle & Sebastian - Life Pursuit
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CD Details
Artist: Belle & SebastianEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-02-07
Music Label: Matador Records
Soundtracks:
- ACT OF THE APOSTLE
- ANOTHER SUNNY DAY
- WHITE COLLAR BOY
- THE BLUES ARE STILL BLUE
- DRESS UP IN YOU
- SUKIE IN THE GRAVEYARD
- WE ARE THE SLEEPYHEADS
- SONG FOR SUNSHINE
- FUNNY LITTLE FROG
- TO BE MYSELF COMPLETELY
- ACT OF THE APOSTLE II
- FOR THE PRICE OF A CUP OF TEA
- MORNINGTON CRESCENT
Music reviews of Life Pursuit
Music Review: Laying on the dock in the lazy sun will never quite relegate me to a bum.
Rating: 4 Stars
Forget Trout Mask Replica, forget Kid A, forget all the cliches: Belle & Sebastian's 1996 morsel If You're Feeling Sinister was a ballsy album. Employing such bare-bones instrumentation that it hardly sounded like the work of a septet (especially one so capriciously assembled from college town coffee shops) the sophomore release quickly became one of those definitive indie albums that hipsters and nerds loved to reference in arguments about glossy production and the true essence of popular music. It's a good thing that the album's melodies were so consistently high quality, because the subtlety of the presentation became a totally defensible statement. A delicate acoustic guitar with a few wafer-thin vocals spouting poignancies, maybe a sparse snare, harmonica or trumpet, these didn't need to suggest paucity of musical ambition. In fact, such traits could be and were seen as humble genius. And to be sure, the obvious ambiguity of the line between mediocrity and brilliance emerged quickly thereafter. The followup The Boy With the Arab Strap was met with an indignant and hostile "0.8" from Pitchfork's godfather hypercritic Jason Josephes while the All Music Guide assuredly awarded it the "near-classic" status of 4.5 stars. This confusion and flipflopping on the part of music critics continued for almost ten long years, and unfortunately it was the band itself that appeared wildly inconsistent rather than the critics that judged them. I'm not a Belle and Sebastian devotee, but near as I can tell the band's songwriting fluctuated slightly but the statement remained the same.
But from any objective standpoint, how can we really reward a "statement" that takes less effort than the norm? I won't equate Sinister with the hackneyed Emperor's-new-clothes analogy or modern art's red square, (after all, it's a perfectly solid record) but consider the following: Stuart Murdoch has admitted in interviews that he was vaguely unsatisfied with the sparseness of Sinister when it was first released. Ta daa. So shouldn't everyone feel a little silly about embracing unintentional "negative space" on an album that could have ended up just being a well-rounded yet excellent indie album? Undoubtedly, especially in light of their newest album, The Life Pursuit, because our "precious" friends Belle & Sebastian happen to click right into that increasingly familiar, uplifting yet occasionally disturbing genre that is indie-pop. Calling The Life Pursuit Belle & Sebastian's best since Sinister is, whether valid or not, an empty promise. The album simply won't appeal to anyone who's always been obsessed more with what the band hasn't done than what they have. For the rest of us it sounds secure and pleasantly satiated in lieu of groundbreaking levels of restraint.
Murdoch's lyrics have often been the bread and butter of Belle and Sebastian's emblematic records because the frontman's vocals were the most prominent of the band's smattering of universal constants. The lyrics coolly fulfilled their duty, lacing simple but literate narratives about college life with a cynical and resigned worldview, while the vocals themselves lent the words a little ambiguity with their dainty na?vet?. At this point, however, Murdoch has obviously discovered the power of the voice as an instrument rather than just as an emotive device. His tones are purer and (for what it's worth) richer than ever, and while the lyrics don't suffer per se, they are either carefully chosen to compliment the tune or molded by enunciation to fit anyway. Accordingly, reading the booklet along with The Life Pursuit may be just as stimulating as with Sinister, but it seems less apropos to the band's goals.
More specifically, the lyrics aren't told as much from the distinctive scope of the bloodless atheist. It hardly sounds like a band ten years the senior of Sinister's Belle and Sebastian; if anything, Murdoch sounds simultaneously omniscient yet idealistic, weaving more third-person yarns with a knowing smile and less of his classic second-person advice. His own love experiences no longer involve "[being] objective... `cause the other boys are queuing up behind us," and instead allow detailed settings to speak for themselves: "we took the evening ferry over the peninsula/we found the avenue of trees went up to the hill/that crazy avenue of trees, I'm living there still." He minimizes the pathos of dangerous archetypes turning the innocent into other archetypes by looking at it from a distance and with a colorful array of characters: the "white collar boy," the "part-time punk," "Sukie the kid" and "the village joke" to name a few. He comments on these sad tales in a range of tones, none of which suggest concern. I was personally surprised the first time I heard him indifferently croak out the opening quasi-bari-tones in the swaggering Elvis-Costello-inspired single "The Blues Are Still Blue" and later on the upstoppable whirlwind tragedy "Sukie In the Graveyard."
It's not just Murdoch's emotional distance that lends these stories a glorious (if unsettling) little "roses will bloom again" philosophy. Yes, his vocal confidence finally matches the confidence implied in his words, but more importantly the band's collage of sounds resonate optimism, resilient almost to a fault. In other words, it's the perfect soundtrack to the emerging spring. The staples of sunny feel-good indie-pop like the Shins, the New Pornographers and Of Montreal beg mention, and it does immeasurable justice to Murdoch's keen songwriting sensibilities to finally include Belle & Sebastian. Of course, all the genre's intrinsic obstacles apply. For example, without a sharp hook, instrumental embellishments can flounder in their own exorbitancy, but The Life Pusuit's melodies are consistent and solid enough that such cheese rears its ugly head only rarely ("Song for Sunshine"). But indie-pop's biggest barrier is the monumental difficulty of creating a true classic album attention curve. The album that's come closest to overcoming this was the New Pornographer's Twin Cinema last year, which had a very graceful flow to it without losing its rapid-fire set of hooks and careful embellishments. The same can't be said for The Life Pursuit, the tracks of which are almost all excellent mixtape candidates, but (with the notable exceptions of "Dress Up In You", "Mornington Crescent" and the beautifully bridged "Act of the Apostle Part 2") don't hold their place in the album's sequence as a key to their identity. This is due at least partly to the fact that the album does sound like the work of a full band this time around, equally contributory without being obtrusive. An array of instruments paints a consistent (mostly) midtempo backdrop, while in indie-pop form one or two unique sounds become central to the song's identity. In other words, the songs are all "the-one-withs."
The lyrical shift is evidence that Murdoch's sense of life has boiled down from a restless, morbid and occasionally arrogant one to a more cheerfully fatalistic view. "Give in to the pressure, the cops gonna getcha" a gleeful 50's-style chorus assures the central character in "White Collar Boy," and it's fairly obvious that this new attitude extends to his band's music as well. The band's lo-fi schtick could practically be called an accident, a consequence of low funding and time pressures, and with this album Murdoch seems to be finally calling his own bluff. There's never any shame in playing to one's strengths, and even though indie-pop has it's own set of attributes that hinder it from actively cultivating greatness, I'm glad to have a strong new member of that community. The pursuit of happiness, right? Well, that's what came to my mind. I guess they're Scottish, so it's not that likely, but you see my point.
B+
Description of Life Pursuit
Japanese limited special edition includes DVD. Virgin Records. 2006.Oh to be free and frivolous, like Stuart Murdoch and his extensive cast of players as they engage The Life Pursuit. There's no "Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It" or "Get Me Away from Here, I?m Dying" on this disc. Life has gotten easier, it seems, since Belle and Sebastian's early days. To boot, since 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress, the Belle cast has indulged a more 70s-era set of influences: Isn't that Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" beat on the funny "White Collar Boy," a near sequel to "Step Into My Office, Baby"? And how about the T-Rex touch on the opening of "The Blues Are Still Blue"? No worries, Belle and Sebastian retain their gleam flawlessly. A jaunty lift is still in their step, a carefree abandon that charms even as it also reaches to the 70s for the funk-meets-psychedelia, "Song for Sunshine." It's bright and breezy throughout (the titles tell some of the story: "Another Sunny Day" and "Funny Little Frog"), with memorably decorous, familiar bouncing rhythms marking much of the album. The downtone "Dress Up in You" and "Mornington Crescent" are spare and lovely, wide-open in their pacing. All the same, "For the Price of a Cup of Tea," almost triggers a sing-along with just its name. --Andrew Bartlett
More from Belle & Sebastian
 Push Barman to Open Old Wounds |  The Boy with the Arab Strap |  Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant |
 If You're Feeling Sinister |  Tigermilk |  Belle & Sebastian--Fans Only |
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