Belle & Sebastian: Write About Love

Write about love, they do, but it's strange. If all you wanted was goopy Tin Pan Alley tracks or pop music, there are more conventional routes, more obvious lyrics one could write. A lot of this so-called Write About Love album seems not to be about love at all. At least 5 tracks don't seem to broach the topic directly at all. But the title doesn't seem ill-chosen. It's that sound, that manic-depressiveness, in love with the world one minute, shunning all for the safety of bed the next, it bounces between stripped down and wall of sound, but doesn't seem at odds with each other. It's all a thing, you see. And that thing is the same language we use in love. It's very much multi-sided, but all of a piece, various the angles from the same viewer: nostalgic, quietly optimistic, boisterously enthusiastic and regretful all in turns. It hits you clearly with its intended meaning while being subtle in its exact approach.

After a too-hesitant opening, the wonderfully wistful "I Didn't See It Coming" rolls in on a drumbeat and piano combo that makes me think 90's, but whose "girl, guy and guitar" call & answer vocals are very much of today, at least, today's model of nostalgia. It beats a path right to the heart, with the warm instrumentation of the past and quietly harmonized sighs that "We don't have the money / Money makes the wheels and the world go round / Forget about it honey / Trouble's never far away when you're around." The invocation to "Make me dance, I want to remember" ought to be enough of a thought to send anybody away with. Echoing back to this mood is the sweet balled "The Ghost of Rock School," one of many songs Stuart Murdoch handles solo on vocals, turning in one of his finer moments, and aided easily by a backing of horns and winds that sound like the lifting of dawn after a still night, especially as the song reaches its crescendo. It's fittingly spiritual for a lyric about seeing God.

The best two tracks feature guest vocalists, who bring a different tone from that of usual female vocalist Sarah Martin. "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John" is led primarily by Norah Jones, who might send a chill up your back with this "long summer's dreaming." The song lays out its theme in perhaps the finest lyric of the album: "What a waste, I could have been your lover / What a waste, I could have been your friend," which hits like a hammer in its second iteration. Academy Award-nominated actress Carey Mulligan appears for the refrains of the title track, a howling beaut of Spectorian celebration. Murdoch seems just a little sinister as he insists "I know a spell that will make you well: write about love, it can be in any form, hand it to me in the morning," prompting Mulligan to sigh in her buoyant vocal that she hates her job, all while the tune is floated along on electric piano, lightening the mood from the tedious routine into fantastic escapism.

The album is dotted with moments of earnest sweetness, like the overstimulated "I'm Not Living In The Real World," or the twist-worthy "Come On Sister." The real treats, though, are in the shadows. The darkened "I Want The World To Stop," which whirs ominously. Again, there's call and response, but it sounds like someone airing grievances to an unsympathetic reflection, tearing itself apart in its climactic outro. Then there's the sorrowful "Calculating Bimbo," and the gentle, world-weary "Read the Blessed Pages," resting ambivalently on a gentle guitar and recorder.

Stuart Murdoch's vocals have that certain uncertainty, that suspicion that he really ought not to be singing what he's singing, but he's often bolstered by a terrific female vocal, whether it be Martin, Jones, or Mulligan. The interplay and harmony is always great, lifting the material in every instance, but his solo outings have a character of their own,. This is a band that knows where everything goes. Just listen to the sheer number of instruments on the record, and not a one of them seems out of place or ill-used. They thoroughly explore the terrain of every aspect they can use, and they come up with a complete trip. Dig "I Can See Your Future," which begins with mariachi-like horns, and uses a Motown-like beat. And "Sunday's Pretty Icons" rockets home by pulling together many of the album's best aspects in one song: top notch vocals and lyrics, a hummable tune and a jangly beat, all delivered by aplomb.

I referred to the album as "manic-depressive." Love certainly does that to you, and you certainly couldn't take that to mean the album is unfocused. The opposite is true, in fact: the album is single-minded in its pursuit of a complete view of that feeling, if not a narrative than certainly that ineffable experience of love, loss, and love renewed. Every new feeling as an expansion rather than a twist. It's really sincere and direct, which I like. Here we have another album with a debt to the past -- like She & Him, The Coral or Raphael Saddiq, it has many obvious touchpoints in 60's pop -- but this isn't a case of recreation or reference. It takes up the strategies of those records in order to take the same path to the heart as they did: swimming with sweet sounds, but in the way a modern record does, written with knowing smarts. Open and honest, yet guarded and unsure.

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