Belle & Sebastian
Dear Catastrophe Waitress

(Rough Trade)

Ever since the release of The Boy with the Arab Strap, Belle & Sebastian has been tinkering with what had become its signature sound. Unfortunately, in the process, it also has strayed from its biggest strength: the bittersweet ability to merge comfortably dreamy and often uplifting melodies with melancholically poetic narratives graced with a biting wit. There’s little doubt that the band had taken its Nick Drake-isms and ’60s folk-pop influences as far as it possibly could and was desperately in need of some new direction in which to find fulfillment. Perhaps in realizing this, the band began its search for a fresh perspective on the intriguing Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant on which the darkness of the lyrics penetrated the surrounding music. The subsequent film score Storytelling further expanded its sonic journey, allowing the ensemble a chance to experiment without necessarily having to live up to everyone’s expectations. After all, few soundtracks ever do.

With Dear Catastrophe Waitress, the group’s first proper album in three years, Belle & Sebastian paints its music with an entirely different spectrum of colors, and even if it doesn’t always succeed perfectly, it’s still a remarkably engrossing collection, one that certainly lays the groundwork for great things yet to come. Undoubtedly, adding producer Trevor Horn (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Pet Shop Boys, Yes, Paul McCartney) to the team that helped sculpt the release was a good thing. With his assistance, frontman Stuart Murdoch has reclaimed his band and returned its songs to what is decidedly more pop-oriented terrain. Granted, the album is a flawed effort, one on which the tracks don’t always sit comfortably next to one another. With sometimes odd interjections of strings and horns, there are moments when the song cycle feels as schizophrenic and scattered as a movie soundtrack.

Yet, there always has been something absolutely irresistible about Belle & Sebastian’s music. The group just has a knack for immediately immersing the listener within its pop-soaked world, and that’s something that hasn’t happened quite so readily since The Boy with the Arab Strap. Even if Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant remains a marginally better album, Dear Catastrophe Waitress is far more accessible. In fact, it may be the easiest of all the group’s albums for the casual fan to embrace. The reason is simple: the melodies are delightfully perky, full of the kind of stuff that pervaded AM radio in the ’60s and ’70s, and for the most part the album forgoes much of the dreaminess that turned off as many people as it turned on. If You Want Me falls somewhere between Philly soul and the Grateful Dead’s Bertha; Wrapped Up in Books adds a Byrds-ian twang; Roy Walker is a playful and theatrical take on Wings; and You Don’t Send Me sounds like Beck’s own explorations of the era. There are also shades of The Moody Blues and The Kinks, found respectively in the precious delicacy of Lord Anthony and the folk-pop of Piazza, New York Catcher, and get this — Stay Loose falls somewhere between the New Wave styles of Elvis Costello, David Byrne, and XTC.

Indeed, if there is one thing that Dear Catastrophe Waitress has in common with Belle & Sebastian’s previous efforts, it’s that the album is a quirky affair that hides some heavier material beneath a cloak of pop-rock transcendence. For example, Step into My Office, Baby is a tale of sexual harassment; the title track comments on domestic abuse; Lord Anthony tackles the schoolyard beatings of a boy who likes to wear dresses; and If You Find Yourself Caught in Love takes a surprising detour to become an anti-war tune. Yet, it would be an easy matter to miss entirely the meaning of these if one were to focus merely on the shimmering, swirling, and downright ebullient music that surrounds Murdoch’s words. In that sense, the group is still living up to its original promise, and if it takes Belle & Sebastian a little while to feel comfortable within its new clothes, well, that’s what happens when a band has the courage to take a risk and alter its sound.