
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit (2006)
Like the Kinks and the magnetic fields, Scottish pop perfectionists Belle and
Sebastian are brilliant at pairing heart-tugging melodies with perfectly turned lyrics that favor kiss-offs over come-ons. But on the group's seventh album, a little bit of the bloom has come off the rose. The single "Funny Little Frog" -- with its Muswell Hillbillies horns and lyrical nod to the early, amazing "The State I'm In" -- is cuter than it is clever. And attempts to augment the band's trademark chamber pop with Shuggie Otis-style psychedelic soul (on "Song for Sunshine") and a Frampton Comes Alive guitar solo ("We Are Sleepyheads") aren't as memorable as you'd like them to be. But when the experiments work -- as on "White Collar Boy," which marries a whistle-ready melody with a fat synth line, and the awesomely glam "The Blues Are Still Blue" -- it's clear that band leader Stuart Murdoch still has plenty of major-league tunes left in the tank.

Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts of the Week
-
Biography: Best known for the shimmering "Under the Milky Way," their lone Top 40 hit, the Australian band the Church combined th...
-
First Anniversary Of Modern Music Blog A year passed either well or badly. This week of last year, i made a decision to share my musical tho...
-
14 Album: Boy October War Under a blood red sky The unforgettable fire Wide awake in America The Joshua tree Rattle and hum Achtu...
-
[Modern music recommended] It became increasingly apparent during 1995 that the answer to the question "Blur or Oasis?" was, in f...
-
This is the first Tangerine Dream album to feature their now classic sequencer-driven sound, which kicked off the whole Berlin School genre....
-
Blondie: Debbie Harry (vocals); Chris Stein, Frank Infante (guitar); Jimmy Destri (keyboards); Nigel Harrison (bass); Clem Burke (drums). P...
-
Family Origins Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle, Washington, the son of Al Hendrix and Lucille Jeter Hendrix. His father,...
0 COMMENTS:
Post a Comment