Former listee Alexis Petridis has written a very interesting review of The Life Support in The Guardian. It is an entertaining piece which will surely not be bettered, and it is always a pleasure to read about oneself in the national press, so I thought I would post it here in case anyone missed it. It is presented without further comment: ------------------------------------- Pop CD Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit (Rough Trade) Alexis Petridis Friday February 3, 2006 The Guardian The seasoned rock critic invariably approaches a new Belle and Sebastian album with apprehension. This is not caused by the album or the band, but by Belle and Sebastian's fans. They may be commonly depicted as the drippiest in rock, but nothing could be further from the truth: they're like the Chelsea Headhunters, if the Chelsea Headhunters had bought their clothes from Sue Ryder and cultivated a working knowledge of nouvelle vague cinema. Say a word against the Scottish septet in print and they launch kamikaze raids on your inbox and write letters to your editor in cat's blood. Most artists would kill for supporters as devoted and ingenious. Long before the Arctic Monkeys, Belle and Sebastian's fans had worked out that the internet could raise a band's profile: block voting by their web community won the band the 1999 best newcomer Brit. The downside is that a die-hard fanbase like Belle and Sebastian's will put up with almost anything: they're too busy clobbering non-believers to death with their vintage BOAC holdalls to criticise the band itself. The records that snared the fans - Belle and Sebastian's second album, 1996's If You're Feeling Sinister, and the three subsequent EPs - were as astonishing as the ensuing releases were patchy. Blessed with a unique writing talent, leader Stuart Murdoch persisted in letting other members contribute songs, to deleterious effect: few bands have ever been so hobbled by the willingness to "let Ringo have a go". However, 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress served notice of a shift in approach. Murdoch was back in charge, while the production desk was manned by Trevor Horn, the man behind both Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax and Barry Manilow's Could It Be Magic '93. The result was their best album in years: they were nominated for Mercury and Ivor Novello awards and sent as War on Want ambassadors to the Palestinian Occupied Territories, the latter occurrence prompting hopes that the charity may yet try to resolve the conflict in East Timor by parachuting in the Pastels. Its follow-up attempts to repeat the feat. The idea of Belle and Sebastian decamping to LA to work with a big-name producer would once have seemed as improbable as Belle and Sebastian driving a Harley-Davidson around a hotel suite filled with empty Jack Daniel's bottles and coked-out nymphettes; even so, the choice of Tony Hoffer as producer seems less bold than Trevor Horn. Horn is a maverick; Hoffer is just one of those Americans who get called when dreary British bands like Idlewild and the Thrills need a bit of Californian polish. The end result follows suit. Dear Catastrophe Waitress saw Belle and Sebastian confidently applying fresh musical ideas to their wispy template: electro-pop and dub, Glitter Band stomp and, most unlikely of all, the twin guitar attack of Thin Lizzy on the wonderful I'm a Cuckoo. The Life Pursuit offers further experiments but they don't quite have the same consistency or impact as their predecessors. The electronic glam of White Collar Boy and Song For Sunshine's spidery funk sound fantastic, but there's something forced about We Are the Sleepyheads' frantic disco, and the odd combination of syncopated beats and affected Bolan-esque warble on Sukie in the Graveyard is just too lumpy to digest. Sukie in the Graveyard highlights a paradox at The Life Pursuit's heart. On its predecessor, the best tracks were the most musically adventurous. Here, you can applaud Belle and Sebastian for trying something different, but the highlights stick closest to their well-worn blueprint. The carefree jangle and swooping melody of Another Sunny Day could have come from any of their albums to date, while Dress Up in You employs every trick in Belle and Sebastian's well-thumbed book - ineffably melancholy piano, muted orchestration, choirboy vocals, a lyric that slowly reveals itself to be written from a female perspective - and still sounds heartbreaking rather than hackneyed. Act of the Apostle II and The Blues Are Still Blue are gorgeous and both token homages to Stuart Murdoch's beloved Felt (there is, incidentally, at least one somewhere in the lyrics or music or sleevenotes of every Belle and Sebastian album, a kind of musical Where's Wally? for people who know more than is strictly healthy about 1980s indie); the former is inspired by Felt's impenetrable instrumental albums Train Above the City and Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death, the latter obviously indebted to Felt frontman Lawrence's latterday project, Denim. Literate, droll, moving and often very beautiful, The Life Pursuit certainly isn't a bad album, but it's a disappointment after Dear Catastrophe Waitress. The diehard fans, who, even as you read this, are filling their fountain pens with sulphuric acid, won't mind. The less committed might be advised to wait and see what Belle and Sebastian come up with next time. --------------------------- And this... is me. I do not like the packaging of the new album. It is sexist, promotes paedofiddlia, and the knees are nobbly. The latter is a problem that has beset B&S before, notably in the Read It In Books video. It is a good album though, I give it four stars. I think maybe the excitement of the approaching release date was a bit too much for Sol Campbell. I hope to attend the Hammersmith Palais concert, so I might see some of you there. Kind regards, Sister Disco +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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