| Besides the brilliance of the group’s earliest records, Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, one of the most fascinating aspects of Belle and Sebastian in the beginning was their enigmatic image (or complete lack thereof), creating a pull so strong it was almost gravitational.
Ten years on from Tigermilk, the group’s seventh album, The Life Pursuit, breaks out in a direct grasp at pop stardom, with Belle and Sebastian themselves more than willing to finally step into the spotlight.
While it’s somewhat less personal than their earlier work (and admittedly can take some time to get into for those who were there from the beginning), The Life Pursuit still holds a treasure trove of golden pop songs and ornate idealism. The likes of "Funny Little Frog" and "To Be Myself Completely" get closest to the Motown sound imagery Belle and Sebastian have been aiming at since The Boy with the Arab Strap’s "Dirty Dream Number Two," while "Act of the Apostle Parts 1 & 2" tells a grand story of finding salvation on the radio.
A member from the beginning, keyboardist Chris Geddes not only views The Life Pursuit as Belle and Sebastian’s finest work, but also a revitalization of the group.
"We wanted to make a record more about the band playing and the band’s performance, and most of it was recorded live off of the floor," he says.
Working for the first time with producer Tony Hoffer (most noted for his work with Beck on Guero and Midnite Vultures), after recording 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress with Trevor Horn (The Buggles and, erm, TaTu), Belle and Sebastian found an all-new in-studio energy and verve.
"We’ve learned a huge amount about making records from both sources," Geddes says. "They brought a degree of enthusiasm that maybe surpassed what we’d even had for ourselves. I think that a couple of albums ago we’d gone as far as we could with each other as a band without working with a producer. We weren’t working together terribly effectively as a unit in the studio without a producer."
Their first steps towards working with a producer, however, didn’t go quite so smoothly. Seeking out legendary ’60s producer Mike Hurst (responsible for Petula Clark’s "Downtown" for one) to record the bitter title track to the I’m Waking Up to Us EP, Belle and Sebastian found a disappointing lack of direction, and the reality of record producing burst the bubble.
"We wanted to work with Hurst, but it wasn’t very successful. It was so funny working with him because we imagined when he produced records that it would be the whole session at once – rhythm and orchestral – and that’s how we wanted to do it. We also expected him to get excited and say, ‘Oh, this is great! It’s how we did it in my day!’ Instead it was the opposite — he told us, ‘We never did it in my day that way at all.’ It ended up not being the right stuff for us, nor the right time for us to work with him."
Working with Hoffer, on the other hand, was an entirely different experience. Besides the injection of new life and excitement, Hoffer’s infamous editor’s ear tightened up Belle and Sebastian’s occasionally meandering songcraft.
"When you’re in a band with someone like Stuart (Murdoch, lead singer and composer), who can write seven verses of a song in the time it takes him to walk from his house to the rehearsal room, it’s a little bit intimidating," Geddes says. "We were really impressed with Tony because he wasn’t afraid to criticize songs and suggest that something might be a bit too long. Sometimes in the past we may have thought that about each other’s songs, but didn’t want to say it. It’s good having someone come in and not censor themselves."
Consider it a fitting occasion, then, that The Life Pursuit arrives a decade after Tigermilk’s debut, hand-in-hand with a series of retrospective collections, books and a special one night only, song by song live performance of If You’re Feeling Sinister (amazingly also recorded and released in 1996) at London’s famed Barbican earlier this year (the recording of which was also released weeks before Pursuit through iTunes).
"It wasn’t really a concerted effort to start a retrospective," Geddes says. "The EP anthology (the brilliant double-disc Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, released last year), just seemed to be the best logical way to keep that part of the back catalogue available to people. The book (the rather un-inspiring Just a Modern Rock Story written by Paul Whitelaw) wasn’t really anything to do with us beyond our interviews with the author, either. I guess it all just goes with the fact that after 10 years, you have got more of a past, I suppose."
Still, don’t think Belle and Sebastian are spending any time looking over their shoulders.
"At the same time as the retrospective stuff, we were as excited about the new record as we have been about any for a long time. I guess if we hadn’t been, it might have prompted more questioning within the band as to where we were currently and as to whether there was a future. I don’t think too much looking back is a good thing, but we’re excited enough about the present and the future to take a bit of a retrospective peek into the past, too." |
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