Belle and Sebastian

The follow-up to If You're Feeling Sinister is an excellent collection of the band's organic, literate, lush, bittersweet pop. It's not a faultless collection, but it takes more chances -- utilizing different vocalists and musical forms that are almost funky. As usual, the band's excellence in capturing teenage rapture is a wonder.

The eight layabouts in the secretive Scottish band Belle and Sebastian are the new kings of
the kind of teen-innocence porn that makes indie-rock fans cry "mama." Manufacturing an
illusion of high school cuddliness without actually appealing to teenagers, they issue
four-minute fluff balls of nonsense Glasgow stories and singsong melodies – naive and
fragile on the outside, tough with knowledge of obscure psychedelic pop recor... More >

Rather than singing the anxieties of suspended postadolescence in lyrics that dissolve upon contact with the mind, Stuart Murdoch pins his themes down one scenario at a time. Rather than tracing his uncertainties in music that wanders hill and dale, he erects song structures and rounds their corners with wispy vocals. With his little gang helping him, the music comes out beautiful and fragile. When their childhood ends, as it must, they'll be happier than they are now--or else much sadder. (Grade - A-)