Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance
Belle and Sebastian
On the opening track, Nobody’s Empire, Stuart Murdoch sings in his distinctive and delicate voice: “Life was too much/It was loud and rough round the edges.”
Fans of Belle and Sebastian know they can always turn to the Glaswegian band to soothe and smooth out the edges.
On their ninth studio album – their first in five years since Belle And Sebastian Write About Love (2010) – the band continue to offer their signature brand of literate, wistful and droll pop.
And what would a Belle and Sebastian record be without a literary reference or two?
After all, the band’s name comes from a French children’s book and they once released an EP titled Books (2004). Enter Sylvia Plath, one of the bouncier numbers here, sees the band flirting with synth pop. Ditto The Party Line.
Apart from the raising of the tempo, the album title also points to an exploration of political themes. The flipside of peacetime is war and on the jangly Allie, Murdoch notes drily: “When there’s bombs in the Middle East, you want to hurt yourself.”
The deprecatory The Cat With The Cream references a “Grubby little red MP/Tory like the cat with the cream.” A Tory is a colloquial term for a member of the Conservative Party.
The album closes with Today (This Army’s For Peace), a dreamy number playing on the oxymoronic juxtaposition of army and peace.
Trust Belle and Sebastian to take on war and politics in a gentle, peaceable croon instead of a bellicose roar.
(ST)