Review Summary: This album will please those who love the band's style, but for the rest, it will prove to be an underwhelming listen.
Belle and Sebastian's second studio offering is considered the best effort of their career. Me, I wouldn't know about that, since I'm not acquainted with all of their albums, but it is certainly a rewarding experience. The lyrics are interesting and thoughtful, the instrumentation is rich and the general vibe of the record is very soothing and relaxing.
Speaking of instrumentation, this album has it all; cellos, violins, recorders, keyboards, trumpets, everything! And quite often they all meld together really nice, too. On top of that, you have a set of pretty, solid pop melodies that are bolstered by Murdoch's fragile and sensitive singing style. And of course, there are also the aforementioned lyrics that come to life by said melodies.
The Stars Of Track And Field embodies, for me, the essence of the record perfectly; the melody is fantastic, the lyrics are very interesting, Murdoch is at his vulnerable best and the instrumentation features a genius, subtle thumping bass line and a tremendous trumpet solo, not to mention the sudden, rapid outbursts of the drums here and there.
Like Dylan In The Movies is another highlight, of course. Along the quirky lyrics, you will find another great hook and a faster tempo than before, as well as a subtle, economic keyboard arrangement. After that,
Fox In The Snow comes in with beautiful acoustic guitar fingerpicking and yet another focused, solid melody that precedes the somewhat more optimistic -musically at least-
Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying. And after that, you have the title track, with its imaginative, dreamy arrangement; a cold, distant piano line that is based around a tightly executed drum-bass-acoustic guitar rhythm section, with scarce, clean electric guitar flashes.
The album, though, refuses to variegate itself.
All of the songs are exactly that: relaxing, soothing, pretty with a nifty touch of bitterness and melancholy at the edges so as not to sound too happy. It's not like sameness is uncommon in music; on the contrary.
Ramones based their entire career around monotonousness. But here, it is different; these guys are not going for a primitive, raw, unpolished product that speaks on an intuitive level. The songs are all stuffed with every kind of instrument and the band certainly doesn't have a way of making the diversity of the instruments work in their favor. And Murdoch, while definitely sincere and heartfelt, becomes a tad tiresome after a while; his mumbling delivery walks a thin line between genuine fragility and pompous pensiveness.
Really, there are not a lot of things one can say about the album (unless one loves it to death) that go far beyond the aforementioned epithets. Sure,
Seeing Other People has a cool piano line and
Me And The Major features intense harmonica playing; I am sure one can sort out the instrumentation after a few listens without my help. But what is really gained from the whole of this album that you can't gain from the opening track?
Don't get me wrong; I like
all of the tracks here. There is not a simple song which can be called even average; they're all good, filled with solid, even if not always terribly memorable melodies and the vibe of the record really gets under your skin. But it doesn't really last, not for me at least. If you dig the style you'll probably love this one to death. For the rest of us, though, this is most likely a satisfying, but lethargic listening experience.
