Review Summary: (expectations)
I think a misconception about the late-period works of Belle and Sebastian has been gradually perpetrated by listeners, critics, even yours truly. After their incredible early period of lo-fi, character-driven indie folk, we say, the band slid into an amenable but safe sophisti-pop sound characterised by cleaner production, longer runtimes and a general feeling of stagnation. Seems fair at a glance, perhaps, but there’s a lot you have to overlook to subscribe to this simplistic notion. First, the way the band subtly shake up their sound from release to release, spanning
Write About Love's indie-film coffeehouse folk,
Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance's extended wind-downs, the throwback sound
Days of the Bagnold Summer championed, and finally the full embrace of elegant pop on 2022's
A Bit of Previous. There's the fact that Belle and Sebastian have always been more experimental than this one-two divide suggests: the comically jarring "Electronic Renaissance" and forward-looking "Lazy Line Painter Jane" rearing their heads on the band's very first releases proves a bolder and more interesting band than we think have always carried the Belle and Sebastian name.
This is all to say that we should perhaps allow for Belle and Sebastian to be a bit more adventurous than is usually expected when we approach a new album from the Scottish legends. This approach will certainly help clear the major hurdle in getting to know
Late Developers, the best Belle and Sebastian album since
The Life Pursuit, that being the absolutely rancid first single "I Don't Know What You See In Me". A contender for the single worst song from Stuart Murdoch's pen, this misfire steps in the shit within the first few seconds with an instantly dated electronic squall before the truly horrendous chorus can make itself known. Listen, this song has absolutely nothing in common with its neighbours, even though a slight electronic tinge makes itself known on the otherwise pleasant "When We Were Very Young", and you have to wonder if they're fucking with us by even putting it on the album.
The frontman does recover some ground by the final stretch. An incredibly strong closing duo places "When The Cynics Stare Back From The Wall", a resurrected 1994 demo with a beautiful feature from Tracyanne Campbell, before the delightful title track sporting some of the catchiest melodies and smartest instrumental backing since "Step Into My Office, Baby". In truth, while Murdoch took the front seat on sister album
A Bit of Previous,
Late Developers is really an opportunity for the other members of the band to shine. Sarah Martin makes her strongest showing since
Write About Love, her honey-smooth vocals sharing space with Murdoch's across the record, whilst the ever-overlooked Stevie Jackson makes no concessions in delivering an immediate contender for one of the band's greatest songs with "So in the Moment". An absolutely riveting power pop journey in three minutes and change, it's the most revitalised the band has sounded in years, swapping overlapping vocal runs over melodies so sweet they might give you a toothache.
Belle and Sebastian haven't sounded like they're having this much fun since
How to Solve Our Human Problems, but the staggered EP release and overlong runtimes of that project were a weakness the 40-minute
Late Developers thankfully avoids. The band are at their best in short, sharp, concentrated bursts of euphoria, which
Late Developers delivers in spades. More importantly, they finally seem to have recognised that it's not impossible to balance their slyly wandering spirits with their wryly written pop sensibilities to rediscover themselves at their very best.
