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| Belle & Sebastian Girls in Peacetime Want To Dance Why you'll love it: Perfectly executed and well rounded pop album Why you'll hate it: Very long, full of "first world problems" |
When Belle & Sebastian "plugged in" over ten years ago, it caused a great divide in the fan base. Those who preferred Stuart Murdoch's original intimate and muted songwriting approach of the late 90s will have their plates full with songs like "The Cat And The Cream" and "Ever Had A Little Faith". The rest of us who have grown to love his more modern half-smile pop delivery will dig in on "Perfect Couples", "Allie", and "The Book of You". These songs are so cheesy and catchy, you can easily picture them as 90's TGIF lineup themes. It's the most common cause of malign thrown at B&S, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
For the most part, Girls... plays like a greatest hits album for Belle & Sebastian; but the group has one more trick up their sleeve for their ninth album... In what has got to be the biggest dare the group has taken since Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003), a few tracks take on dance floor synth-pop. "The Party Line" has turned a lot of heads. Some see this new venture as Murdoch losing touch, and desperate to connect with a younger audience. I greet it with optimism. "The Party Line" grounds itself with a 60's pop style principal melody typical to Belle & Sebastian. Behind all the bells-and-whistles, it's undeniably a B&S song. "Enter Sylvia Plath", on the other hand, is the only sour spot on the album. It sounds like the demo button on a Casio keyboard. Even with missteps, I always applaud experimentation, and love it when a band does anything to give an album a little extra character. Is the discotheque where a twee act belongs? Probably not, but this group has earned the right to pay a visit.
An hour passes, and Belle & Sebastian end up right back where they were; just angering people for being themselves. Those of us who spend less time getting infuriated over what the band isn't doing should enjoy this album to a great degree just for what it is. It's over an hour long, and dammit, almost all of it is good! While Murdoch's songwriting jumped the shark in some minds, he does nothing here to make my eyes roll. Almost every song is fun and the ballads feel honest. Even the more extravagant numbers such as "Nobody's Empire" and "Play For Today" manage to keep together as they grow into breathtaking crescendos.
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[AND NOW - THE EXTRA SONGS]
OK, above the line break was perspective of this album as if you downloaded it off Amazon or whatever. Now, I'm going to share some thoughts on the 120+ minute double LP vinyl version. On this version, the track listing has been drastically shuffled (for the better, mostly), and there are four bonus songs.
At first I was dumbfounded as to why these extra songs aren't included on the original album. "Two Birds" is not only the most fun B&S song I've heard since "The Blues Are Still Blue", but a much more successful attempt at electronic Eurovision pop than anything that made the cut. "Piggy in The Middle" would have been another highlight, and why it wasn't on the album was a nagging question. I may have discovered an answer though. The other two bonus tracks ("Born To Act" and "A Politician's Silence") borrow from The Clash's "The Card Cheat" and David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World" quite egregiously. Maybe all four of these songs were considered a bit too influenced to be included on the final product.
Despite tacking on more time to an already long album, the double LP version of Girls in Peacetime Want To Dance is an impressive effort by Belle & Sebastian. Even without the extra songs (which you totally should track down!), it's still a solid release that will probably hold onto my top ten by the end of the year
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