Belle and Sebastian -Write About Love

Wed 24th Nov, 2010 in Music Reviews

Calling a Belle and Sebastian album Write About Love doesn’t do a lot to set it apart from the rest of the band’s catalogue. Principal songwriter Stuart Murdoch has earned a reputation as a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, a storyteller free with wit, sensuality and flashes of venom often overlooked by those who prefer to see him as a cardigan-clad milquetoast figure. His characters and scenes tend to be painted in small gestures, leaving the sexual and romantic lives of the protagonists of Sukie in the Graveyard and The Stars of Track and Field tantalisingly ambiguous.

Though many of the songs on Write About Love are written in the first person, Murdoch still writes from within characters to tap into the urgency, joy and bitterness that come from love. Actress Carey Mulligan (of An Education fame) plays one of these characters, a bored and lonely office girl taking Murdoch’s advice over the Jefferson Airplane groove of the title track. Mulligan’s voice is pleasant, and perfectly pitched for the everyday-girl that she plays, but would probably risk anonymity in a lesser context.

More effective is Norah Jones’ turn on Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John. For all her pigeonholing as the dinner-party favourite of the early noughties, she sings with rare poise and control. Her smoky voice nails the coy undertone of questions like “can I stay until the milkman’s working?”, and her wistful admission that the men of the title are “the history of boys I invent in my head” is simply gorgeous.

Of course, Murdoch can still strip back the artifice and reveal an affecting intimacy in his own voice. Writing not about romantic love, but about love of a more metaphysical kind, The Ghost of Rockschool is a love letter to the creator, as Murdoch finds “God in the sun/God in the street/God before bed and the promise of sleep”. The Ghost of Rockschool succeeds because Murdoch displays an unspoken confidence in his belief; even the most hard-nosed atheist would feel a cosmic twinge at the sound of love and faith in Murdoch’s voice when he sighs, “I got a window open on your constellation”.

The highlight of Write About Love, though, is not by Murdoch, nor does it feature a star guest. One of Belle and Sebastian’s quiet achievers, Sarah Martin contributes two songs to the album; the brass-led I Can See Your Future and the glorious I Didn’t See It Coming. The latter resists grand metaphors and dense verbiage in attempting to describe it, because the song itself is more about small pleasures and subtle nuances. Sung by Martin, her coo floats in and out of soft piano chords, with strong but sympathetic percussion from drummer Richard Colburn anchoring the airy track. The perfectly judged chord change into the chorus is an unmitigated delight unto itself, the pleasure of which doubles with the aching melody in which Martin sings, “money makes the wheels and the world go round”.

It’s a stunning piece of pop-songcraft from a band that forged an identity making just that at a point when ‘pop’ was a dirty word. Now that the times have caught up to Belle and Sebastian, it’s a delicious thrill to see the band continue to set the standard for whimsical, wordy melodicism.