Belle And Sebastian - Pop Lullabies From Scotland

“A film about Belle And Sebastian would be really boring”

It's the summer of 1996, under the cold skies of Glasgow. In the window of a small record shop sits, in a corner, a vinyl record with a sun-bleached blue cover. Maybe it's the sense of fragility it conveys that makes it look so lost, with that girl tenderly cradling a stuffed tiger cub. Or maybe it's that name in plain white lettering, which has nothing to do with the stereotype of a rock band: "Belle And Sebastian", just like that 1970s cartoon, based on a novel by the French writer Cécile Aubry, which told the adventures of little Sébastien and his big white dog Belle, searching for his mother among the villages of the Pyrenees...

Standing in front of the window is a slight young man with fair hair, somewhere in his thirties, with the face of a boy: whenever he walks past the shop, he never fails to steal a furtive glance at that strange blue record. But with each passing day, his gaze grows a little more resigned and melancholy.

His name is Stuart Murdoch, and it's his thin voice you hear singing in the grooves of that record, telling of boys and girls too sensitive to face the world.

If someone told him that, within a few years, that very album would become a cult record the world over, the young man from Glasgow would probably burst out laughing: the shop in his neighbourhood can't even get rid of the copy Stuart left there, which, day after day, keeps staring back at him from the window as if mocking his illusions...

Murdoch isn't one of those people who always dreamed of becoming a rock star: he hadn't even started writing songs until he was twenty-five...

No real job to speak of, unless you count working as a caretaker in a church, a pile of pages left half-finished and never completed, endless afternoons spent wandering around the city on one bus or another, until he came to know all the secrets of Scottish public transport... "riding on city buses for a hobby is sad", Stuart Murdoch will admit in "The State I Am In": his life seems hopelessly unresolved, forever waiting for something definitive to happen and change it once and for all.

That decisive meeting is one Murdoch chases everywhere, even going to London in search of his own personal musical idol, Felt singer Lawrence Hayward. But while Bob Dylan managed to gather up Woody Guthrie's legacy at his bedside, Stuart Murdoch doesn't even get to see Hayward from a distance: his is a life made of dreams, not of rock-history epic.

After a series of impromptu and unlucky attempts as a one-man band, Stuart sets off desperately in search of someone to play his songs with, going so far as to stop people in the street and ask anyone he meets to join his group.

Until the day Belle meets Sebastian.

“Have you ever seen The Magnificent 7? It was like that, only more tedious”

It's always when you least expect it that things happen.

Sebastian had put up an ad in a Glasgow supermarket: "Musicians wanted". Belle saw it and walked up to him with determination, saying "Hey you! Would you teach me to play guitar?". Sebastian doubted he could teach her anything, but he admired her energy: so he said yes.

It matters little that, in reality, things went in a less romantic way than Stuart Murdoch enjoys imagining in the liner notes of "Tigermilk". When it comes to Belle and Sebastian, it's the fantasy that counts.

Between late 1995 and early 1996, Stuart Murdoch decides to enroll in one of those government programs "to get you off the unemployment rolls", which was supposed to teach him the trade of sound engineer, or at least something along those lines. For once, the welfare state's caretaking concerns aren't in vain: it's precisely in that course, in fact, that Stuart Murdoch meets a literature-loving bassist named Stuart David.

The two begin recording demos together, which end up in the hands of a talent scout from a small British label, Jeepster. Thanks to his interest, the two Stuarts find themselves taking part in a "Music Business" course at Stow College in Glasgow: a course that offers its best students the chance to record a single for the college's own label, Electric Honey.

Murdoch and David set up camp in a Glasgow café and start recruiting their fellow travelers: Isobel Campbell on cello, Stevie Jackson on guitar, Chris Geddes on keyboards and Richard Colburn on drums. With the addition of Mick Cooke's trumpet and Sarah Martin's violin, who join the group right away but will only become full members later on, Belle and Sebastian are ready to make the most of the prize offered by the college. But the five days allotted by Electric Honey are enough for this just-formed group to record an entire album, let alone a simple single...

The record is called Tigermilk and is pressed in just a thousand copies. By the time the "Belle and Sebastian phenomenon" stops being a matter for a select few, there will be people willing to pay £400 and more just to get hold of one of those legendary thousand vinyl copies, to the point of forcing the band to reissue the album on CD in 1999 to discourage the speculation.

But in 1996, managing to sell someone a copy of that light-blue vinyl still seems like an impossible task for the Glasgow lads...

“You know my wandering days are over, does that mean that I’m getting boring?”

It only takes the first notes of Tigermilk to capture the world of Belle and Sebastian forever: that bare, fragile voice, venturing alone out into the world, amazed at having once had a day of happiness back in 1975, doesn't it sound as if it belonged to a Paul Simon raised amid the music boxes of old Europe? And those lyrics tinged with irony, telling of a brother who decides to come out to his family by turning up at his sister's wedding with his sailor friend, don't they seem to come straight from Morrissey's songbook? After all, "The Smiths' records are the blood in my veins", Stuart Murdoch doesn't hesitate to admit. And in comes, discreetly, an acoustic guitar, followed one by one by all the other instruments, making that irresistible melody ever more pressing, right up to the smiling climax of the chorus: it's "The State I Am In", whose unmistakable crescendo and sixties flavor will soon become the blueprint for all the Scottish band's classics.

Tigermilk is made of an innocence unafraid of being out of fashion. It plays with the intellectual pleasure of quotation and looks around with the unripe eyes of a young Holden. Its contagious vitality creates a colorful blend of nods to a sweetly retro folk-pop. There's no virtuosity or revolution to be found in the record's grooves, but it's the perfect simplicity of its melodic ideas that wins you over immediately, overcoming any resistance in the face of the inevitable naivety of a still-green band's "end-of-year project".

The Belle and Sebastian of Tigermilk are a band still searching for their own personal stylistic signature, having fun making music without even considering the idea of an audience interested in listening to it: and yet the Scots' debut album holds a purity that's hard to recapture, as Stuart Murdoch will admit when looking back on Belle and Sebastian's early days.

In "Expectations" the entrance of trumpet and strings carries us into the arms of Love's Forever Changes, going on to define the Belle and Sebastian canon to come in songs like "My Wandering Days Are Over" and "Mary Jo".

The hints of easygoing r'n'b from a young Van Morrison out on the town with Big Star, which liven up “She’s Losing It”, morph into the squarer, more Kinks-like cadences of “You’re Just A Baby” and “I Don’t Love Anyone”, before melting into the smile of a pacified Nick Drake on the delicate “We Rule The School”.

But there's still time to be surprised, when the drum machine and the synth-pop keyboards of “Electronic Renaissance” come into play, in an impossible tribute to the New Order of those who never felt quite at ease on a dance floor: “You go disco and I’ll go my way”.

The contrast between one's own dreamy sensibility and the reality of a world that's inevitably superficial and hostile is in fact a constant theme on the album: when you're like the girl at the centre of “Expectations”, when everyone sees you as “strange” and odd, you feel like hiding from everything and everyone, as Murdoch sings on “I Don’t Love Anyone”, convincing yourself there's nothing worth loving, “not even Christmas”… The closing lines of “We Rule The School” leave no doubt about it: “You know the world is made for men / Not us”.

Just adolescent self-indulgence? In spite of every self-appointed maître à penser, the world of Belle And Sebastian unfolds precisely by chasing its own questions, with no fear of looking immature. So rather than shutting themselves away within the walls of their own bedroom, as the champions of the “bed-sitting pop” tag soon pinned on the Scots would have us believe, what Belle And Sebastian aspire to is a dimension as vast as their own desires: “If you had such a dream/ Would you get up and do the things/ You’re been dreaming?”, as Stuart Murdoch urges on “I Could Be Dreaming”.

And so, here are the Glasgow boys, applying the same enthusiasm to venturing timid classicist flute lines in the intro of “Mary Jo” and to reciting readings from the fairy-tale pages of Washington Irving, as Isobel Campbell does in the coda of “I Could Be Dreaming”, or to improvising those amateur videos, shot with arthouse cinema at heart, traces of which can be found on the anthology DVD “Fans Only”, released in 2004.

After all, who else could have the candour to come up with thoughts like “reading the Gospel to yourself is fine” or “skating a pirouette on ice is cool”, besides the Belle And Sebastian of “We Rule The School” and the odd Peanuts character?

“You could either be successful or be us”

Ignored by the music press, Tigermilk spreads by word of mouth and the odd late-night radio play. So, when Jeepster brings the band into the studio, it's to record Belle And Sebastian's true debut album, after the “dress rehearsal” of those thousand vinyl copies that seemed destined to end up only in the homes of a few friends and relatives.

The result is If You’re Feeling Sinister, a collection of gentle acoustic watercolours in pastel shades that revives a flowery songwriting tradition hovering between Donovan and Cat Stevens, fused with the wave romanticism of Lloyd Cole. A record able to strike a fragile, surprising balance between sober melodic freshness and a more mature, reflective songwriting, earning Belle And Sebastian a place among the classics of Nineties indie pop.

Of course, if music were to be judged solely on its innovative reach, a record like If You’re Feeling Sinister could never aspire to masterpiece status. But fortunately the dimensions of beauty (because that's ultimately what we're talking about with any art form) are broader than the mere category of novelty: they take in nuances as near-imperceptible as grace, purity, and a correspondence with the heart's urgent needs…

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Belle And Sebastian are often most convincing precisely when they're not ashamed to be “derivative” and to openly own up to their roots.

Across the record's ten, light-touch songs, Stuart Murdoch's artisanal sensibility lays a dusting of Simon & Garfunkel-brand sugar over a thin layer of Bacharach-style icing: yet the recipe miraculously never turns saccharine, opting instead for essentiality at a time when the hype around acoustic movements — more or less new — was still far from being conjured up by music critics.

The opening of “The Stars Of Track And Field” almost feels like a remake of “The State I Am In”, with its crescendo from defenceless to cheeky and its schoolboy imagery of hours spent in solitary training to become the school's athletics star. But then the piano of “Seeing Other People” kicks in, and it's practically impossible not to find yourself humming that brisk, sinuous little tune, with its good-natured mockery of a bored couple looking for new thrills…

Not to mention the extraordinary simplicity of the bassline on “Like Dylan In The Movies”, which leads straight into a chorus that's about as close to an anthem as a band of shy Scots could ever conceive: “If they follow you/ Don’t look back/ Like Dylan in the movies/ On your own/ If they follow you/ It’s not your money that they’re after, boy, it’s you”. And you can almost picture him, the young, irreverent Dylan of Pennebaker's film “Don't Look Back”, of which guitarist Stevie Jackson has always been a fan, and whom Belle And Sebastian point to as the model of someone who refuses to compromise.

The more singer-songwriter-driven approach of If You’re Feeling Sinister surfaces on tracks like the title track and “The Boy Done Wrong Again” (on which Jackson makes his vocal debut alongside Murdoch), but above all on “Fox In The Snow”, a new “We Rule The School”, more romantic and less childlike, yet just as vulnerable, bound to break hearts and set future fans' lighters ablaze.

What truly wins you over, though, is the softly folk-inflected cadence of "Judy And The Dream Of Horses" and "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying", the perfect calling card for the band's bittersweet essence, along with the breezy playfulness of "Mayfly" and "Me And The Major", with its pseudo-Dylanesque harmonica and its wry tale of generational conflict born in a train compartment.

"All I wanted was to sing the saddest songs", Murdoch declares in "The Boy Done Wrong Again", "if somebody sings along I will be happy now". And within that fine line between sadness and joy lies the whole horizon of Belle And Sebastian.

As with Tigermilk, this album's cover is once again devoted to the dreamy image of a girl in close-up, this time awash in an enveloping red tint. Sitting in a meditative pose, with Kafka's "The Trial" left lying beside her, her gaze drifts melancholically into the void. Those elegantly monochrome portraits, which would go on to characterize every Belle And Sebastian release (with the exception of a few EPs), point directly to the unmistakable artwork of Smiths records: but while the Mancunian band always favored refined icons of celluloide celebrity, on Belle And Sebastian's covers the protagonist is the anonymous common people from the circle of friends of these Glasgow kids. It's a far from casual choice for a group whose songs almost always favor the viewpoint of their characters over the use of the first person singular, a testament to the deep sense of identification between the Scots and their audience: "It's not the fans who stop us in the street", Stuart Murdoch slyly reflects, "it's us who stop our fans in the street"…

With If You're Feeling Sinister, critics finally wake up to Belle And Sebastian's existence, and the spotlight of the indie world begins to turn toward the Scots. But the band's members seem constitutionally allergic to the limelight: they dodge photo shoots, refuse interviews, play only the rarest of shows… and their shyness, amid the noisy Britpop England of the time, only fuels the cult around this splendid anomaly of an "invisible" band.

In the meantime, though, Belle And Sebastian perform in London for the first time, and in 1997 they start to fill out their live schedule, favoring intimate, atmospheric venues like the Union Chapel in Islington or the chapel of the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York, whose roof will come crashing down on the Scots' heads in the middle of the show… "Belle was ok but oh Sebastian… wrote his diary that he would never be young again" No singles are lifted from If You're Feeling Sinister, but in 1997 Belle And Sebastian inaugurate another of those traditions destined to become one of the band's hallmarks: the periodic release of EPs of new material that serve as an essential companion to the "major" releases.

Over the course of that summer, three four-track EPs come out, later to be collected together in a single box set, each one brimming with the atmosphere of a band on the verge of blossoming.

On Dog On Wheels, Murdoch and co. dust off the demos recorded before Tigermilk, gifting fans the original version of "The State I Am In", with that wooden drumming and that wavering voice that seem to drift in from a window left open by chance on some Glasgow street. It's no surprise, then, that the tone of this first EP is the closest to the shades of the "blue album", with the title track once again recalling the colorful world of Love and the Morricone-esque intro of "String Bean Jean", which even makes room for the sound of vintage keyboards. And while "Dog On Wheels" returns to themes of childhood, with its surreal dialogue with a toy dog, the EP closes with a track whose title is nothing short of a statement of intent: "Belle And Sebastian", a rare case of a band dedicating a song to its own name…

The weakest link of the EP trilogy is probably the following Lazy Line Painter Jane, whose title track delivers one of the most atypical songs in the Scots' catalogue: not so much for its sixties-flavored organ, guitar and handclaps, but rather for the overbearing presence of Monica Queen's forceful female voice — the Thrum singer and occasional Belle And Sebastian guest — which feels like a foreign body against the band's usual mood. As for the rest, the piano ballad "You Made Me Forget My Dreams" and the spry little tune "Photo Jenny" come across as all too predictable, while "A Century Of Elvis" is nothing more than an instrumental with a spoken voice laid over it, to a result that's decidedly skippable.

Except that on the third EP, 3… 6… 9 Seconds Of Light, that very same instrumental base becomes the springboard for one of the most sweetly enveloping songs in Belle And Sebastian's entire discography, "A Century Of Fakers", which captures better than anything else the burning need not to let the world diminish the scope of one's own heart: "Everybody's trying to make us / Another century of fakers". Then there's "La Pastie De La Bourgeoisie", with its epic, old black-and-white TV theme feel, there are the oblique acoustic sketches of "Beautiful" and "Put The Book Back On The Shelf", and there's even a ghost track with the unfinished feel of an improvisation, titled "Songs For Children".

Of the three 1997 EPs, 3… 6… 9 Seconds Of Light (its cover featuring a photo of Stuart Murdoch as a child) is the one that points Belle And Sebastian most directly toward their "difficult third album". But all three EPs, the last two accompanied by liner notes once again drawn from Murdoch's literary streak, help add to the Glasgow band's collection of snapshots a series of key characters, from the insecure String Bean Jean to the dreamy Lazy Line Painter Jane, who would resurface in Belle And Sebastian's lyrics down the line.

"We're not a collective, we're a combo. Collectives shamble but combos rock"

The new album, the green one, hits shops in September 1998, and for the first time there's a male figure on the cover: it could hardly have been otherwise, after all, for an album titled The Boy With The Arab Strap, where the "arab strap" in question is a lascivious sex-shop item, but it's also the name of the noir pop duo made up of Scots Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton, with whom Isobel Campbell, Chris Geddes and Sarah Martin have had the chance to collaborate.

The challenge of the third album is no easy one for Belle And Sebastian. Their secret formula, invented with Tigermilk and patented with If You're Feeling Sinister, rests on a harmony that would inevitably end up shattering if the Scots simply tried to reproduce it unchanged. Bandleader Stuart Murdoch therefore decides to step back and invite the other members of the group to add new ingredients to the mix.

The band's members aren't virtuosos of musical technique: their first two albums and their still-rare live shows make that plain enough. And yet each of them has a musical personality bursting with creativity waiting to be expressed, which will soon take shape in a series of side projects: Isobel Campbell will start whispering her soft lullabies with the Gentle Waves, Stuart David will indulge his passion for indietronica with Looper, Mick Cooke will have fun with the Amphetameanies, and Stevie Jackson and Chris Geddes with V-Twin…

But it's on The Boy With The Arab Strap that the band members' individual personalities come out into the open for the first time, turning the perfect cohesion of If You're Feeling Sinister into a more multifaceted, many-sided whole.

And so, in comes the frail solo voice of Isobel Campbell (hers is also the face pictured in a romantic black-and-white shot in the booklet), carrying the tinkling nursery-rhyme melody of “Is It Wicked Not To Care?” into a fairy-tale world, as she wonders what's so wrong about not caring when you're told it's wrong to hold hopes and dreams that don't exist. Then comes the elegant tone of Stevie Jackson, on “Seymour Stein” — mischievously dedicated to the record exec of the same name — a song destined to become legendary thanks to the scene in the film “High Fidelity” in which Barry storms into the shop and, as soon as he hears the Belle And Sebastian song playing, snaps at his co-workers with a peremptory “What the hell is this? Who is this, and who told him he could listen to music?!”

The band members' contribution isn't limited to simply offering an alternative to Stuart Murdoch's voice, but extends to songwriting itself. And it's not hard to spot the hand of Stuart David's electronic leanings in the sinuous, analogue beat of “Sleep The Clock Around”, with its spacey keyboards straight out of some imaginary disco for awkward teenagers, over which the intertwined voices of Murdoch and Isobel launch into one of the most irresistible tour de forces of the Scots' career (complete with bagpipes in the finale) — a true live set staple.

The Belle And Sebastian of The Boy With The Arab Strap, produced with the help of Tony Doogan, are a band that seems to have discovered the full awareness of its own means, giving even its most classic songs arrangements of a newfound complexity and layering, in a blossoming of violins, guitars, tambourines, flutes, xylophones and trumpets... In “Dirty Dream Number Two” an actual string section even pops up, delivering one of the record's most sparkling tracks alongside the title track, which brings out piano, organ, handclapping and a guitar line straight out of “Slip Slidin' Away”.

Opening the journey is the Velvet-like Sunday-morning feel of “It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career”, once again built on the antithesis between a world of “lazy line painters” and one made of soul-sucking careers. Stuart Murdoch once again sketches out hazy Go-Betweens moods on “Ease Your Feet In The Sea” and “Simple Things”, while on “A Summer Wasting” he plays at his own personal version of the Beach Boys: “I spent the summer wasting/ The time was passed so easily/ But if the summer’s wasted/ How come that I could feel so free?”. And yet in his songs a hint of formula starts creeping in, which is precisely what the variety of The Boy With The Arab Strap manages to redeem, as shown by the long whispered epilogue of “The Rollercoaster Ride”, with Isobel Campbell's counter-melody adding a precious touch to its tissue-paper-thin texture.

Despite inconclusive episodes like the spoken-word piece “A Space Boy Dream”, set against an ambient backdrop with unusually dark, jazzy shades, The Boy With The Arab Strap is the album that cemented Belle And Sebastian's status: it reaches number 12 on the British charts, and even earns the Scots a Brit Award for Best Newcomer. Taking the stage at the awards ceremony (you can see this too on the “Fans Only” DVD, which by now should be clear is an essential gem for anyone who loves the band) are Mick Cooke and Richard Colburn, who of course introduce themselves as Belle and Sebastian... and for a few days even the British tabloids take an interest in the band, accused of having “stolen” the award from the favourites.

“This is just a modern rock song, this is just a tender affair”

As a companion piece to the album, a new EP of unreleased material, This Is Just A Modern Rock Song, comes out at the end of 1998, gathering four ballads as light as ears of wheat in the wind, as if they'd come from the same rarefied landscapes as Mojave 3.

The title track is an outtake from If You're Feeling Sinister which, naturally, has nothing to do with what one might expect from a “modern rock song”: rather, it's yet another timeless ode from Belle And Sebastian that, while adding nothing new to the band's by-now unmistakable style, still ranks among the Scots' most precious pages, with that memorable autobiographical sketch of their early days: “Stevie’s full of good intentions / Richard’s into rock ‘n’ roll / Stuart’s staying in and he thinks it’s a sin / That he has to leave the house at all”. Songs made to once again lull dreams tinged crimson by the rays of the last sun, like the organ on “I Know Where The Summer Goes”, Isobel's voice on “The Gate”, or the sense of time passing on “Slow Graffiti”.

About a year and a half passes between the gentle folk brushstrokes of This Is Just A Modern Rock Song and the bright colours of the following EP, Legal Man, and by now the release of Belle And Sebastian's fourth album is just around the corner. Legal Man, however, is an appetizer that has practically nothing in common with the main course, bodily transporting the listener into a sparkling party set in the fabulous Sixties (what else?). From the backing vocals of guests Maisonettes to Isobel Campbell in “yé-yé girl” mode, Belle And Sebastian have fun turning back the clock more explicitly than ever, both on the EP's title track — accompanied by a video in perfect vintage style that even takes them onto “Top Of The Pops” — and on “Winter Wooskie” and the instrumental “Judy Is A Dick Slap”.

Another month goes by, and then comes the actual album, introduced by a surreal title drawn from a warning Stuart Murdoch happened to read some time before in a public bathroom: Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant.

This time the yellow cover features the Valtysdóttir twins from Múm, holding a book (what else...) and exchanging a play of gazes reflected like doppelgangers. On the back of the booklet, meanwhile, is the full band, disguised in carnival-style costumes as a 19th-century aristocratic family, with a gorilla-butler in the background and a caption reading “Please don't let them make me be a monkey butler”...

Someone, however, is missing from this family reunion: bassist Stuart David, who after recording the album decided to leave the band to devote himself full-time to Looper and his literary passion, which would go on to produce the novels “Nalda Said” (published in Italy as “Nalda diceva”, dedicated to the tragic fable of a soul too insecure to withstand the fear of not being loved unconditionally) and “The Peacock Manifesto”.

Despite the loss of Stuart David, who would be replaced by Bob Kildea of V-Twin, Belle And Sebastian carry on with the help of Tony Doogan along the path of progressively enriching their songs' musical dress, a journey already begun with the previous album. So, on Fold Your Hands..., the string section that had popped up in a still not fully focused way on “Dirty Dream Number Two” becomes a practically constant presence, though never too intrusive.

The “yellow” Belle And Sebastian are more Beatlesque than ever. Their music takes on an orchestral dimension that leads them towards the shores of measured symphonic pop, almost like a Verve stripped of all bombast.

With the opening “I Fought In A War” they even dream of writing their own personal protest song, and it's as if Dylan's “John Brown” had fallen into the arms of Donovan. But it's when the Scots give in to their only seemingly carefree tone that they manage to be irresistible once again, as is immediately clear from the harpsichord minuet of “The Model” or the sparkling duet between Stuart Murdoch and Isobel Campbell on “Women's Realm”.

The same old story? Well, there's really nothing to be surprised about: Belle And Sebastian's style is one of those madeleines that isn't meant to undergo revolutions. And yet, the graceful care taken over the arrangements on Fold Your Hands... gives a new, sparkling sheen to the classic frailty of their songs, bringing to completion a maturing process begun in the classrooms of a state course for aspiring musicians, without yet giving way to any loss of innocence. While critics start turning up their noses (more out of principle than anything else), the album reaches the top ten in the charts for the first time, with a memorable video in which Stevie Jackson, to the strains of the frivolous “The Wrong Girl”, goes on a desperate hunt for a jacket just like the one sported by Bob Dylan on the cover of “Blonde On Blonde”, in a bid to finally become cool on campus.

Between the lazy, indolent electric piano of “Don’t Leave The Light On Baby” and the whipped-cream nursery rhyme sung by Isobel on “Family Tree”, Sarah Martin also makes her debut as a lead vocalist, but her “Waiting For The Moon To Rise” turns out to be little more than a faded version of her friend Campbell's “gentle waves”. Equally unconvincing are the gloomy bell tolls of the mystical “Beyond The Sunrise”, and the mournful piano that underscores the rape narrative of “The Chalet Lines”. Thankfully, though, Stuart Murdoch's sense of humour is as brilliant as ever — like a Jarvis Cocker stripped bare — and, to close the record, he lands one of his most affecting confessions, launching himself into the swirling strings of “There’s Too Much Love”, airy as swallows in flight, to paint an awkward yet overwhelming declaration of love: “I can't hide my feeling from you now/ There’s too much love to go around these days”.

“Belle And Sebastian were the product of botched capitalism”

True to form, 2001 sees the release of two new EPs, Jonathan David and I'm Waking Up To Us, which confirm the maturity Belle And Sebastian had reached by this point. The first EP features newcomer Bob Kildea as its cover star, in a sort of toga-party scene apparently meant to evoke the biblical story of David and Goliath, while the second sees the Scots working for the first time with a proper producer, Mike Hurst. In both cases, the band's goldsmith-like craft manages to retain its richness without tipping into baroque excess: what really lingers, more than the breeziness of “Jonathan David” or the apocryphal Brian Wilson pastiche of “I Love My Car” (complete with an explicit declaration of love, in the lyrics, for the four Beach Boys), are the velvety “The Loneliness Of A Middle Distance Runner” (a nod to the title of Alan Sillitoe's story “The Loneliness Of A Long Distance Runner”, as well as the film of the same name) and “Marx And Engels”, where the authors of “Das Kapital” serve merely as a pretext to tell the story of yet another rebellious girl lost in her books…

At this point, the time has come for Belle And Sebastian to start playing live for real: between 2001 and 2002, the band embarks on its most demanding tour to date, reaching Italy for the first time as part of their world tour.

Anyone expecting a bunch of withdrawn, self-contained Scots is thoroughly thrown off by the colourful euphoria of a band that turns out to be unexpectedly glamorous, a far cry from the introverted image that had been so widely fantasised about: a dandy-suited Stuart Murdoch, in jacket and tie, dominates the stage, while Stevie Jackson's bespectacled nerd face is the star of constant jokes with the crowd, who turn out in warm numbers for their shows. Isobel Campbell, for her part, plays a dizzy Bridget Jones, in a striking little dress printed with a giant image of electric Dylan in his dark sunglasses, 1966-style.

During the tour, Belle And Sebastian preview some new songs, written for the soundtrack of the film being made by the director of “Happiness”, Todd Solondz, titled Storytelling. The Scots dream of matching the glories of “The Graduate”, but in reality the director decides to use just six minutes of their music in his film. The band, however, doesn't let this discourage them, and in June 2002 they release an album of the material written for the film regardless. It's a risky move, one that probably betrays an excess of confidence on the band's part: the record turns out to be an unresolved collection of ornamental instrumental pieces, among which only six proper songs find room, two of which barely reach a minute in length. The whole thing is interspersed with dialogue taken from the film, which only makes the result feel even more disjointed.

In what amounts to the first genuine misstep of Belle And Sebastian's career, what's surprisingly missing is exactly the melodic brilliance the Scots had always been masters of: the only things worth saving are Stevie Jackson's flamenco turn on “Wandering Alone”, the breakneck rush of “Scooby Driver” and a dancing Isobel on “Storytelling”, while Murdoch limits himself to offering one gem in his usual smiling-loser poetics: “I don't want to play football/ I don't understand the thrill of running, catching, throwing (…) getting hit by people I don't know”.

The pans aren't long in coming, and even the most generous critics settle for viewing Storytelling as a mere stopgap, while waiting for a real new album.

“Everybody’s trying to make us another cool decade of fakers”

Meanwhile, another rift cracks the unity of the Glasgow crew, following the departure of Stuart David.

Once the long tour is over, Isobel Campbell realises that Belle And Sebastian are no longer the game she had thrown herself into at the start of the adventure, and that the rockstar life simply isn't for her: better, then, to focus on her solo career, which will lead her to release “Amorino” in 2003, her first record under her own name after two releases as Gentle Waves between 1999 and 2000.

Belle And Sebastian decide to turn the page, then, leaving their longtime label Jeepster and signing with the legendary Rough Trade, run by Geoff Travis.

Their first record for the new label thus arrives as the most eagerly awaited release in the band's history, long suspended between cult-favourite status and aspirations to the (unlikely) pop spotlight. But the impression is that, in trying to take the easier road, Belle And Sebastian end up losing along the way exactly the grace and sense of measure that had marked their finest moments.

As proof of the “new direction” taken, the band appears on the album cover for the first time, albeit relegated to the background, against the backdrop of a sort of postcard-perfect Italian restaurant. And for the first time the album is preceded by a single taken from the record, “Step Into My Office Baby”, accompanied by a trashy video that seems to have very little to do with the elegant irony the band had accustomed us to.

As for the record, titled Dear Catastrophe Waitress and released at the end of 2003, it really does seem that certain cloying, vaguely easy-listening touches, however trendy, lack the taste without which it's all too easy to slip into preciousness.

The much-feared production of Trevor Horn, formerly associated with the likes of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and mentor of the T.A.T.U. phenomenon, doesn't distort the band's sound, which at most comes across as a touch more “polished” than usual: it's certainly true, though, that the slide into the synth-pop of “Stay Loose” (nothing like the naïve charm of the old “Electronic Renaissance”) is hardly the best possible way to close out a record like this…

Despite the dips in quality, though, there's no shortage of songs destined to join the ranks of the band's classics outright, such as “If She Wants Me”, with its irresistible funky falsettos, the lively “I'm A Cuckoo” and “If You Find Yourself Caught In Love”, the Byrds-like opening of “Wrapped Up In Books”, or the softer “Lord Anthony”.

The orchestral arrangements and sunny mood of the album are the natural continuation of what Belle & Sebastian showed on Fold Your Hands…, even if the list of additional musicians keeps growing, evidence of a sound that's increasingly refined and at times overblown, but still capable of stringing together melodies that inevitably stick in the memory.

Dear Catastrophe Waitress, in short, is a pleasant enough listen but all too stylish, retreading the band's usual standards without always managing to move the listener, as when the familiar nods to Love or Simon & Garfunkel become too blatant, or when on "Asleep On A Sunbeam" Sarah Martin's childlike voice tries to make up for the absence of Isobel Campbell.

The comparison is made even more unflattering by the 2005 release, on Jeepster, of the double album Push Barman To Open Old Wounds, the "definitive" collection of tracks taken precisely from the band's historic EPs. An essential gem for anyone still unfamiliar with Belle And Sebastian's extraordinary parallel discography, but just an item for die-hard fans who already own all the original EPs.

Confirming the Scots' growing visibility, an unreleased Belle And Sebastian track, "The Eight Station Of The Cross Kebab House", is included on the compilation "Help: A Day In The Life", put together to raise funds for the War Child charity.

While awaiting the release of their seventh album, in 2005 Belle And Sebastian also make their debut in the world of digital music, putting their first official live release, If You're Feeling Sinister: Live At The Barbican, up for sale on iTunes and donating the download proceeds to the DEC's Asia Quake Appeal. It's the recording of a concert held in London for the "Don't Look Back" series, in which artists perform their most iconic album in full. In the case of Belle And Sebastian, the obvious choice was If You're Feeling Sinister, though the faithful live run-through of the album's full tracklist doesn't offer many thrills, given the Scots' tendency not to radically rework their songs on stage. Rather, the record is a chance to confirm what John Peel once called the "surprising muscularity" of the live impact Belle And Sebastian have built up over the years: compared to the frailty of the original sound, the 2005 versions of the If You're Feeling Sinister tracks are polished and gleaming, especially in the reinvigorated energy of the crescendos on "Judy And The Dream Of Horses" and "The Stars Of Tracks And Field", or in the beefed-up chiaroscuro of the title track. Overall, though, the exercise doesn't manage to convince as much as the more varied setlist of an ordinary live album might have, and the comparison with the studio versions only ends up enhancing the appeal of the originals even further.

“What happened to all of the feeling?”

After ten years together, Belle And Sebastian decide to fly across the Atlantic to Los Angeles to cook up their most extroverted and danceable record yet, originally conceived even as a double album. But on The Life Pursuit, released at the start of 2006 and going straight into the British top ten, the Scots settle for rehashing cheap glam riffs and chasing black-music frivolities, in an attempt to show everyone that they're no longer afraid to think big and are ready to leave behind the cliché of melancholy dreamers. The result is a band that seems to have lost its own identity, caught uncertainly between generic Seventies-flavoured pop-rock and an unconvincing rehash of its own past.

In their new guise, Belle & Sebastian, rather than surprising anyone, end up losing precisely what made them original along the way. That's why the summery flavour of The Life Pursuit and its calculated use of every classic pop trick never manage to go beyond the surface.

It's true that at first listen one is inevitably thrown off by the rubbery, T. Rex-like strut of "White Collar Boy", or by the shameless impression of early David Bowie and "shapeshifting" Lou Reed (as on Transformer) offered up by "The Blues Are Still Blue", right down to Stuart Murdoch's vocal timbre. But once the initial jolt of hearing sour-edged solos creep into a Belle & Sebastian record wears off, it quickly becomes clear that the name-dropping of The Life Pursuit remains an enjoyable game, but ultimately an end in itself.

Beyond certain gaudy touches, which the previous Dear Catastrophe Waitress wasn't free of either, the real problem with The Life Pursuit is that, for the first time, the Belle And Sebastian sound, however polished, comes across as flattened and lacking in bite, not helped by Tony Hoffer's production. And so the classic Belle And Sebastian-style tracks, like the single "Funny Little Frog" or "Another Sunny Day", with their bouncy rhythms and jingle-jangle guitars, however enjoyable as ever, now call to mind the Coral more than the Smiths.

Sure, Mick Cooke's trumpet is still there caressing the whispers of "Dress Up In You", there's the nostalgic softness woven through "Mornington Crescent", and Stevie Jackson's voice on "To Be Myself Completely" evokes the days of "The Boy With The Arab Strap". But what's missing is innocence, and when it comes to Belle And Sebastian, that's no small detail.

Only Stuart Murdoch's literary flair continues to shine, sharp and witty in sketching out his stories in a couple of lines, as in the laundrette vignette of "The Blues Are Still Blue". Compared to the pages of their early days, Murdoch's pen now seems to carry less personal involvement and more detachment from his characters, giving the songwriting a breezier feel.

The real measure of Belle And Sebastian's arc is revealed by comparison with Isobel Campbell's new record, "Ballad Of The Broken Seas", released almost simultaneously with The Life Pursuit and devoted to a deep dive into folk tradition in duet with the shadowy voice of Mark Lanegan: few would have bet on it, but the artistic path taken by the woman who once seemed like just the group's shy blonde has since taken on traits far more interesting than those found in her old bandmates' new output… Isobel's journey continues a few months later with "Milkwhite Sheets", once again dominated by a repertoire of archaic gloom à la Shirley Collins, though the result, without the ex-Screaming Trees man's contribution, sounds less compelling and more one-note. The odd couple of Campbell/Lanegan return, however, in 2008 with "Sunday At Devil's Dirt" and in 2010 with "Hawk", fully confirming the value of their first collaboration.

Meanwhile, in 2006 Belle & Sebastian take part in Azuli Records' Late Night Tales series, putting out a compilation of tracks by their favourite artists (to be followed by a second volume in 2012). It's a collection whose glossy lounge and electronic sheen, featuring names like Stereolab, Múm and RJD2, gives way to a core of easy listening (The Peddlers), progressive pop (Demis Roussos), tropicalismo (Gal Costa) and power pop (Big Star), before arriving at a heart made of soul, blues and folk, where Donovan, Johnny Cash and Jimmy Yancey stand out. Sure, the juxtaposition of hip hop tracks and J. S. Bach suites is one of those quirks that remains stubbornly hard to digest, but the album is still an interesting glimpse into Belle And Sebastian's musical roots, who also offer up a cover (unreleased but far from essential) of "Cassaco Marron" by Brazil's Trio Esperança, with Sarah Martin playing the part of the girl from Ipanema.

That same year, the Scots have fun playing around with children's songs, releasing their own version of "The Monkeys Are Breaking At The Zoo" for a Save The Children compilation titled "The Colours Are Brighter", and including the melancholy little carousel tune "Florence's Sad Song" (credited to Stuart Murdoch alone) on the album "Songs For The Young At Heart".

At the end of 2008, Jeepster releases The BBC Sessions, which collects (incompletely) the band's performances on British radio during their golden period between 1996 and 2001.

From the classic style of its cover image alone, "The BBC Sessions" immediately reminds even the most inattentive listener that the ideal dimension of Belle And Sebastian's music remains confined within the walls of a bedroom: “If I could be a song / I would be something that would snake into your room / And be with you the whole night long”, sings Stuart Murdoch on the previously unreleased "(My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique". There's no denying, then, that the live rendition of the Scots' songs is hardly designed to surprise: only a few extra shades are added to the picture already sketched out in the studio versions of the tracks. On stage, Stuart Murdoch and co. have grown an increasingly lively and engaging stage presence over time, but their performances have never strayed too far from faithfulness to the originals.

That's probably the reason why "The BBC Sessions" fails to shine with its own light, even as it renews the charm of those old watercolours. Also because the four unreleased tracks placed at the close of the record, dating back to a John Peel session from 2001 (before Isobel Campbell's departure from the band), end up feeling rather dispensable next to the contemporary EPs Jonathan David and I'm Waking Up To Us, effectively foreshadowing the loss of personality that would mark the following years.

The sinuous rhythm of "Shoot The Sexual Athlete" allows Stuart Murdoch to deliver an unabashed declaration of love for Go-Betweens (to the point of imagining introducing the late Grant McLennan to mum and dad...), which takes the shape of an autobiographical-flavoured ode to the joys of being a fan, spending his time hand-painting badges of Pere Ubu and the Sugarcubes. The chorus of "The Magic Of A Kind Word" remains an off-the-cuff bit of fun, just like the beats of "(My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique", sampled from the old Mercy hit "Love (Can Make You Happy)". And over the lilting melody of "Nothing In The Silence", Belle And Sebastian entrust Isobel Campbell's unmistakable whisper with a poetic manifesto tinged with her usual shyness: “In silence there is truth / There is beauty, there is love / There is nothing in the silence / To be frightened of”.

The album's limited edition also includes a second disc featuring the recording of a 2001 concert in Belfast, which confirms the highs and lows of Belle And Sebastian live: the inevitable loss of intimacy isn't made up for in terms of emotional impact, but it resolves into a colourful, ultimately slightly frivolous party, in which the soft sweetness of the cover of the Beatles song "Here Comes The Sun" stands out.

"Life could be musical comedy"

"Wanted: singer who loves Ronettes, Twinkle and Friend And Lover. Aspiring Céline Dions need not apply". The newspaper ad gives no other details. Whatever could it be about? Around twenty girls turn up for the audition; in front of them, a skinny blond lad from Glasgow named Stuart Murdoch...

So begins the new fairy tale orchestrated by the leader of the celebrated Scottish outfit. "I was out jogging and suddenly I heard this tune in my head: I knew straight away it couldn't be a Belle And Sebastian song. I could hear female voices and strings, I could hear everything, but I just couldn't picture myself singing it with the band". From 2004 onwards, Murdoch began setting aside ideas for a new project and went looking for female voices capable of giving shape to his vision: after the initial ad in a local paper, word spread online and applications quickly rose to around 400. A title arrived too: God Help The Girl. And Murdoch's imagination took the form of an old-fashioned musical, with a knowing nod to Sixties girl-pop.

Put like that, it might sound like the classic move of an artist in creative crisis, given the dip in inspiration Belle And Sebastian had shown in their previous outings... Instead it's quite the opposite, because "God Help The Girl" succeeds where the Scots had until then failed: putting together a collection of unabashedly popular songs without losing freshness or fun. It's not just about the presence of different voices compared with the band's by-now proverbial reedy tones: the point is that Murdoch's pop ambitions this time manage to find a more fitting setting, both in terms of atmosphere and songwriting. A side project, sure, still a long way from the records that built the Glasgow collective's cult following, but one capable of injecting new life into a compositional streak that had seemed spent, ultimately sounding more convincing overall than the preceding Belle And Sebastian releases.

Murdoch carves out a small part for himself, but the lead role goes to the clear, velvety voice of Irish singer Catherine Ireton, already the cover star of the single "The White Collar Boy" and singer with the jazz-pop ensemble Elephant. A meeting born by chance through Murdoch's wife, who had in turn borrowed an Elephant record from her former flatmate, who had in turn got hold of it thanks to a friend of Catherine's with whom she shared a master's course in Glasgow... The result of this providential word-of-mouth allowed the Belle And Sebastian frontman to complete the cast selected for his own personal talent show: "for me, the female voice is the fundamental beauty available to the human race", he states firmly.

Just the two episodes from The Life Pursuit reprised on God Help The Girl would be enough to confirm Murdoch's hunch: the orchestral cabaret of "Act Of The Apostle" finds a delicate balance that easily eclipses the original, and "Funny Little Frog" takes on an unexpected sensuality thanks to the Adele-esque delivery of American newcomer Brittany Stallings.

Backed by Belle And Sebastian in full and a 45-piece orchestra conducted by Rick Wentworth, the northern soul swing of the songs is coated in a glaze of strings that harks straight back to the days of Fold Your Hands..., with the liveliness of girl-pop backing vocals providing a counterpoint to the lyricism. The single "Come Monday Night", carried by a soft hint of bass, sounds like a caressing She & Him apocryphon, while on "I Just Want His Jeans" the melancholy candour of Asya, singer with teen-indie band Smoosh, recalls the slightly unsteady lightness of Emiliana Torrini on "Me And Armini".

Murdoch's songwriting acts as the connecting thread, and the alternating voices work as an antidote to déjà vu. What comes to life is an all-female story centred on the character of the incurable dreamer Eva (Catherine Ireton, of course), lost in romantic fantasies made up of phone calls that never come and voicemail messages picked apart in minute detail... "Please stop me there, I'm even boring myself", she pleads on the title track. But this time around, boredom never sets in, and that's already good news.

As a companion piece to the album proper, a few months later comes the EP Stills, gathering a series of outtakes ranging from the delicacy of "I'm In Love With The City" to the irony of "The Psychiatrist Is In", via the cheerful fanfare of "He's A Loving Kind Of Boy". The release of God Help The Girl, together with the almost simultaneous inclusion on the compilation "Dark Was The Night" of a cover of the traditional "Another Saturday" credited to Stuart Murdoch alone, sparked rumours of a possible Belle And Sebastian split, but the band's own leader was quick to set the record straight.

“I want the world to stop”

A pink apostrophe between the words "Belle" and "Sebastian". After a four-year break following The Life Pursuit, Stuart Murdoch and co. return in 2010 with their pink album, in more of a romantic mood than ever. Write About Love returns to the scene of the crime, teaming up again with the same producer (Tony Hoffer) and the same location (Los Angeles) as the previous record. But the slightly crowd-pleasing ambitions of The Life Pursuit seem to soften here: the new album tries to recover some nuance, without entirely disowning the bright colours of recent times. "I Didn't See It Coming" is an encouraging opener, with its sinuous gait and Sarah Martin's voice winding between piano and arpeggios. Straight away, though, the vintage-style keyboards of "Come On Sister" steer the compass back toward the polished atmospheres of recent albums. And "Calculating Bimbo", a classic blue-eyed-soul ballad, certainly doesn't help matters, sliding quickly into predictability.

And yet, "I Want The World To Stop" is probably the best single the band has put out in years. The voices chasing each other, the brisk beat, the bittersweet aroma of horns and strings: for a moment, everything clicks back into place. The lesson of God Help The Girl is felt above all in the search for new female voices: this time Murdoch manages to enlist none other than Carey Mulligan of "An Education", diving with the English actress into the Sixties liveliness of the title track. Granted, the album's other duet, with Norah Jones on "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John", says a great deal about where the Scots' reference point lies these days: a pleasant, tamed kind of pop that tends to favour soft-focus entertainment.

There are no glaring missteps on Write About Love: the problem is that everything stays shrouded in an aura of mediocrity. Even the songwriting contributions from the other band members (Stevie Jackson on "I'm Not Living In The Real World", Sarah Martin on "I Can See Your Future") turn out to be decidedly dispensable. Between the faded whispers of "Read The Blessed Pages" and the choral epilogue of "Sunday's Pretty Icons", it's the velvety tone of "Ghost Of Rockschool" that comes to the album's rescue, a track that wouldn't have been out of place on The Boy With The Arab Strap.

The songs on Write About Love rehash, without too many surprises, the themes most familiar to Belle And Sebastian. There are the penniless bohemians (“We don’t have the money / Money makes the wheels and the world go round / Forget about it, honey”), there's reality smothering dreams (“I hate my job / I’m working way too much / Every day I’m stuck in an office”). But this time everything sounds more predictable than usual – and simply dropping the names of Balzac and Bach into a lyric (as in the closing lines of "I Want The World To Stop") certainly isn't enough to recover a literary veneer...

"Write about love, it could be in any form", Murdoch suggests, echoing the album's title. Writing about love sounds easy. The most natural thing in the world. But once the handwriting becomes familiar, even passion ends up turning into routine.

In 2013, Belle And Sebastian gathered together a collection of b-sides, alternate versions and outtakes from their Rough Trade years on The Third Eye Centre. The comparison with its analogous predecessor, Push Barman To Open Old Wounds, is merciless: this time what the Scots have to offer is nothing more than an anthology of scraps for completists, confirming the band's dip in inspiration.

Yet, setting aside the trap of nostalgia, The Third Eye Centre offers a chance to look at Belle And Sebastian's transformation in a different light, uncovering the facets of a band in search of its mature identity. What stands out immediately is the eclecticism of the moods: Belle And Sebastian seem to have reserved their most curious side, the one driven by the urge to take on even the riskiest choices, for singles and EPs. There's no shortage of ideas, in other words: it's their execution that ultimately leaves something to be desired, rarely going beyond a mere exercise in style.

After finally bringing "God Help The Girl" to the big screen (albeit with mixed results) and signing to Matador, Belle And Sebastian returned in 2015 with Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance. As with The Life Pursuit, the Scots once again bank on the element of surprise: venturing into what Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne (tellingly brought in to introduce the record) bluntly calls "a bold step onto the dancefloor, bound to raise a few eyebrows". Consider yourselves warned, then: this time Stuart Murdoch and co. feel like throwing a dance party in their bedroom.

From the Eighties glitter of "The Party Line", the album's first single, Belle And Sebastian show they're perfectly at ease even in a guise seemingly so far removed from the fragility of their early days. From the pounding Europop beat of "Enter Sylvia Plath" to the bittersweet synth-pop of "Play For Today" (a duet with Dee Dee Penny of Dum Dum Girls), it's precisely the tracks that choose to break away from the band's usual canon without too much hesitation that sound most convincing: the outfit tailored in Atlanta by producer Ben H. Allen (already behind the sound of bands like Animal Collective) is dazzling and bold, with Murdoch's voice rising to match it with a more mature touch.

Once the colours of the strobe lights fade, however, Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance proves far more uncertain about which direction to take. Stevie Jackson spins out a funky whirl ("Perfect Couples"), Sarah Martin lends herself now to cheeky riffs ("The Book Of You"), now to tart keyboards ("The Power Of Three"), while Murdoch winks at the nostalgia of longtime fans with the classicism of "Ever Had A Little Faith?". But, much as on the preceding Write About Love, the songs themselves are made of tissue paper, and the string-drenched "The Cat With The Cream" isn't enough to revive the band's folk credentials.

The second EP trilogy: How To Solve Our Human Problems

Exactly twenty years after the first trilogy of EPs released on Jeepster, between late 2017 and early 2018 Belle and Sebastian put together a second triad gathered under the single title How to Solve Our Human Problems. Landing on Matador seems to have marked the decisive step for Stuart Murdoch and company towards an all-encompassing idea of pop, able to deploy, without further hesitation or second thoughts, both bedroom pop and (more or less) dancefloor pop. But while the fusion of these two impulses was mostly a strength on the previous record, here the thing that has always been Belle and Sebastian's essential, magic ingredient goes missing: the songwriting. Sure, there's a mile-long line of artists out there who'd love to have written songs like "Sweet Dew Lee" and "We Were Beautiful", smartly placed at the start of the tracklist and, despite themselves, serving as bait for this latest release. But the truth lurks in the folds of this hour-plus of music, and it soon surfaces. The new disco attempt "The Girl Doesn't Get It" still does its job well enough, but "Poor Boy" already makes you regret this bold choice – to the point that it even makes you reassess the latest Arcade Fire. The synthetic uptempo "Show Me the Sun", for its part, reveals an unsuspected flatness of expression. Things don't fare any better with the exotic digressions of "Everything Is Now (Part One)", a kind of Santana-esque theme watered down into lukewarm new-age atmospheres. To the point that the now-familiar male-female vocal duets feel worn-out and self-stereotyped, almost grating by now ("Too Many Tears").

It's obviously not all to be discarded, and it's no coincidence that Belle and Sebastian win you over again whenever they go back to simply being themselves. "A Plague on Other Boys" and "There Is an Everlasting Song" are cut from the same old cloth, just slightly dusted by the passing years but still more than enough to make your eyes light up again. So there's one truth, and one truth only: this three-part behemoth would have been just as effective with half the load, if not a third of it. We might not have cried masterpiece, true, and we wouldn't have solved humanity's problems either. But we would certainly have come away feeling far more satisfied.

The soundtrack for "Days of the Bagnold Summer"

Finally, the fateful moment arrives for Belle and Sebastian to reckon with the seventh muse. The occasion is the film adaptation of Days of the Bagnold Summer, the successful graphic novel drawn by Joff Winterhart in 2012. The plot, needless to say, sounds like it could be straight out of a Belle and Sebastian song: the protagonists are a heavy-metal-loving teenager grappling with the torments of growing up, and the mother he finds himself "condemned" to spend an entire, endless summer with, in a situation that grows more potentially explosive with each passing day.

Compared to the electronic, danceable outings of their recent records, marked by light and shade, the Glasgow band decides here to come back home, fully embracing the twee-pop that had made their fortune. Originally written to accompany images, these tracks often shed their vocal parts in favour of the instrumental side. But more generally, it's the spirit itself that has returned to what it once was. The single "Sister Buddha", which also exists in an acoustic version serving as the album's intro, is, without beating around the bush, the song the Scots hadn't managed to write in quite some time.

At the end of 2020, shortly before Christmas, Belle and Sebastian resurfaced with an unexpected live album titled What To Look For In Summer. Unable to travel to Los Angeles to record a new album, the Scots decided to indulge their fans' requests and released a generous selection of tracks from their latest tour.

In more or less random order, old and new hits attempt to pass the live test, with mostly positive results. From the latest batch, “We Were Beautiful” shines through, a track that even in its studio version stood out with the kind of understated memorability of an instant classic; far less edifying is the result achieved with a “Poor Boy” that struggles to make its pop allure shine (nor does Martin's vocal performance help much, it must be said). Going further back in time, we can only confirm (having already caught it live back in 2018) that “Stay Loose” remains one of the most enjoyable songs of the bunch, especially thanks to that chorus which seems tailor-made to be sung by an exultant crowd. Also charming are the versions of “Step Into My Office, Baby” and “Wrapped Up In Books”, essentially from the same era, and since we're on the subject of fun, the real heavyweight is once again “The Boy With The Arab Strap”, presented here in an extended, vaguely boozy version.

We're effectively already in the realm of the Scots' great classics, and here an even broader chapter opens up. Standout versions include “If You're Feeling Sinister” and “My Wandering Days Are Over”, placed in succession almost treacherously toward the end of the very long tracklist (twenty-three songs!). But what truly shines is, above all, a piano-and-voice version of “The Fox In The Snow”, genuinely spine-tingling.

Some will complain that What To Look For In Summer is missing several heavy hitters – “Piazza, New York Catcher”, “I Want The World To Stop”, “Another Sunny Day”, to name a few – but after all, Murdoch and co. made it clear from the start that this wouldn't be a best of or an anthology. On the plus side, dusting off tracks like “I Can See Your Future” or “Dirty Dream Number Two” might just reignite the urge to pick up some albums from the Glaswegian band's discography. Assuming you ever set them down in the first place.

Looking backward instead of forward is an operation often frowned upon among music critics. In the specific case of Belle and Sebastian and this soundtrack, however, one can only conclude that the band has simply gone back to doing what they do best. That is, writing majestically subdued songs, adorned with a grace that is a rare and precious gift. A grace that manifests itself in the piano-and-organ pairing of “I Know Where The Summer Goes”, in the guarded carefreeness of “Safety Valve”, nicely highlighted by the violin's sound, in the intimate reflections of “This Letter”, accompanied by acoustic guitar, in the melancholy inflections of “We Were Never Glorious”, once again carried by the piano in a coda that is, in its own way, almost baroque. The very fact that a very old hit like “Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying” is slipped treacherously into the setlist seems, in some implicit way, to legitimize this feeling of homecoming.

But perhaps the real surprise, no longer a return but in some sense a step forward, are the instrumentals “Jill Pole” and “The Colour's Gonna Run”, where the storytelling doesn't need Stuart Murdoch's words and Belle and Sebastian's chamber-pop can be appreciated in its full, dazzling range of possibilities.

In May 2022, Belle and Sebastian released a new studio album: A Bit Of Previous. Forced by the pandemic to work within the boundaries of their native Glasgow rather than fly to Los Angeles for their usual recording sessions, B&S produced one of the most conservative records of their now lengthy discography. Not that the earlier chapters of the Scottish saga were brimming with particular jolts, mind you, but in the grooves of “A Bit Of Previous” one can hear, loud and clear, a self-satisfaction that some will read as simple classicism or, at a stretch, mannerism, and others as an attempt to revive glories that are, in truth, ever more distant.

If we grant Stuart Murdoch and co. boundless credit and an untarnished affection for what they've given us over the decades, it's precisely for that same reason that we struggle to get excited about the twelve tracks making up the new Glaswegian set. Running through this parade of songs that we might once have furtively discovered on a b-sides collection, like “The Third Eye Centre”, one wonders which of these could make it onto a hypothetical best of without looking out of place. Maybe just a couple, and more out of generosity than conviction: “Young and Stupid”, which floats at mid-altitude over the usual carpet of well-crafted arrangements, and “Sea Of Sorrow”, which once again sends whole crowds of artists back to school on the fundamentals of the perfect ballad, offered here in its evergreen waltz version.

The rest of the repertoire, that is the bulk of it, drifts along without much disgrace or glory in a golden mediocrity ill-suited to people with B&S's pedigree. Back come the pastel colours, a certain muffled, reassuring atmosphere that can't really be explained in words without hitting play, a whole world of imagery so skilfully crafted that, once you're inside it, you never want to leave. And yet, in a record that abandons any rock ambitions, what shakes things out of their torpor is, almost unexpectedly, the occasional intrusion of that synth-pop which the band has been deploying with pseudo-danceable aspirations at least since “Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance”: hence attempts like “Talk To Me, Talk To Me” and “Prophets On Hold” liven up the tracklist without ever fully convincing.

Whether the single “If They're Shooting At You”, whose proceeds go entirely to the Red Cross's efforts in Ukraine, is a stylistic exercise or perhaps a kind of ongoing self-replication, whether “Unnecessary Drama” tries its hand at a flashy country-folk uptempo fit for a village fete (with all due respect, of course), whether “Come On Home” restores a crystalline class with an almost soul-like spirit — in short, if here and there the band gets by with skill and craft on standard formulas, the boredom caused in places by tracks like “Reclaim The Night”, “A World Without You” or “Working Boy In New York City” is a warning sign for anyone who cares about Belle and Sebastian's music.

About eight months after A Bit Of Previous, Belle and Sebastian unexpectedly deliver eleven more postcards from the same sessions that gave birth to the 2022 album. Playing with words – previous/late – and with the colour scheme that, as per tradition, defines the artwork – from the sepia of its predecessor to a blue that evokes the legendary beginnings of “Tigermilk” – Stuart Murdoch and co. confirm with Late Developers (2023) what had, in fact, already emerged with what can by now be considered its twin album.

The best material, by design, is saved for the opening stretch of the record, with “Juliet Naked” trying to don the robes of a new classic in the Glaswegian band's catalogue, and in all likelihood succeeding: an almost-epic ballad built on nervy guitars and heartfelt vocal lines, one of those gleaming little vignettes that this Scottish outfit always nails effortlessly. The standard is upheld with satisfying results across “When We Were Very Young”, “Will I Tell You A Secret” (a kind of nursery rhyme in indie-pop form), “When The Cynics Stare Back From The Wall” (featuring guest Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura) and “Late Developers”, the latter more heavily orchestrated and built on rhythms leaning more Latin American than Nordic.

So far so good, and we're talking about a fairly substantial chunk of the repertoire, but it's when Belle and Sebastian venture far from their home shores that their formula once again starts to show its limits. While the uptempo “Give A Little Time”, a touch too lightweight, has by now become another staple of the Glasgow band's sound, harder to digest are numbers like the glossy pop of “The Evening Star” and, above all, yet another foray into pseudo-dance territory with “I Don't Know What You See In Me”, whose almost forced enthusiasm will surely take on a different meaning live.

Pros and cons aside, it's nonetheless a work that comes across as slightly more inspired than its companion piece from the previous year.

The thing is, what made Belle And Sebastian unique (even when the brief explosion of the NAM phenomenon filled record shops with Nick Drake imitators) was their ability to build a world of their own, to not be a band like any other: from the gallery of everyday characters born of Stuart Murdoch's imagination to their unmistakable album covers, from their reluctance in the face of media hype to the image of a community of friends eager to share their dreams, Belle And Sebastian allowed a generation weary of their older siblings' ideological rebelliousness to finally recognize itself in a dimension that actually suited its own sensibility.

Today, however, it no longer seems so easy to tell Belle And Sebastian apart from just any band devoted to the folk-pop revival: something to listen to in the background for the length of an aperitivo, not something in which to let wander the muddled longing for what one expects from life. Emotional and sentimental as much as you like, perhaps, but genuine at its root. And that's precisely the worst thing that could happen to Belle And Sebastian: becoming fake. Because the Scots aren't built to play a part — that kind of thing is better left to some new “cool decade of fakers”…

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