If any group has perfected the creation of quirky indie pop, it’s Belle and Sebastian. They’ve been writing songs about love and loss, filled with jangly guitar and organ hooks, since many of us were blissfully unaware that such music existed (and I really would not want to meet an eight-year-old whose favorite band was Belle and Sebastian). This pattern continues with the band’s latest effort, Belle and Sebastian Write About Love. It’s been four years since the group released their last album, the critically acclaimed The Life Pursuit, but the time off has not been spent evolving the musicality of their songs. Instead, the group continues doing what they do best: making indie kids dance and think about stuff.
The opening track “I Didn’t See It Coming” captures this mood perfectly, as it begins, “Make me dance, I want to surrender / Your familiar arms, I remember.” It’s a rather subdued melody, not charged with much anxious energy (that’s saved for later), but it does lay the foundation of the album, serving as the introduction to how Murdoch, Martin and Jackson will fulfill what the album’s title suggests. This idea of remembered love goes along with many, if not all, of the following songs.
The next track, “Come On Sister,” is much more vibrant, utilizing a chip-tune style synthesizer to go along with Murdoch’s guilty conscious lyrical flow, where he asks, “Did you ever say an honest word? / Did you ever say a pretty word?” Turmoil and angst in my indie pop record? Surely you jest. In all seriousness, the song is great and captures everything a fan would come to expect from Belle and Sebastian.
“Write About Love,” the title track and main anthem of the album, tries to make sense of the line between optimism and pessimism. The song opens with a call to “Write about love, it could be in any tense, but it must make sense,” meaning that the experience of life itself is more important than the current state of it. Carey Mulligan, an odd but surprisingly acceptable guest performer on the track, belts out the chorus about how she hates her job and is generally dissatisfied with the mundane state of everyday life. She even has to eat her lunch on the roof to escape boredom, any office dweller’s dream if they’ve recently watched a movie like (500) Days of Summer (but then they run the risk of jumping off said roof). Despite this, it is pointed out by Murdoch that life only seems dull when a deliberate attempt is made. The second verse, “The seconds move on (if you watch the clock) / And the sky grows dark (if you’re looking up)” shows that life is better without focusing on the trivial. If you don’t want the clouds to be grey, just don’t look up.
The last track, “Sunday’s Pretty Icons,” is a decent enough closer in which Murdoch and Martin contemplate the prospect of heaven, and reach the conclusion that, “Every girl you ever admired / Every boy you ever desired/ Every love you ever forgot / Every person that you despised is forgiven,” which is probably the most optimistic portrayal of what the afterlife can hold.
In the end, the album has some stand-out hits, but also carries a lot of unmemorable moments (such as the snore-inducing Norah Jones track). It’s a common problem that plagues many artists, and I won’t hold the band accountable for a minor lack of creativity in some departments. After all, they’ve been pumping out quality albums since the Backstreet Boys were still relevant, and where are those guys now?
