Now let me clarify my bluntness: this album, along with If You're Feeling Sinister, had sat in my library for ages, largely un-listened. Pot was the impetus necessary to lose any pre-conceptions about bands and albums and what I have or haven't listened to yet, so that I could, among other things, put on some headphones and get lost in a maze of shuffled music. And it doesn't surprise me at all in retrospect, that as with any relaxed, bias-free and intimate listen, I discovered truths previously invisible. And thus, my entry into the world of these lovely Scots.
The sound is gentle. It's the soundtrack to the lives of lonely high school boys and girls who, instead of becoming angsty, rebellious, or destructive, continue to believe that life can be beautiful, lovely, and maybe even lively. Where both groups embrace the all-too-important fact that life's (often) a bitch, one throws a finger in everyone's face and the other hangs on to who-the-fuck-knows-what. Hope, probably.
The music's romanticism is sharp, and so, as Chopin's was grounded in "harmony, counterpoint, and fugue," so is Belle & Sebastian's grounded in reality and in the honest belief that life can be beautiful. As such, the album becomes wistful, blurring the line between being pensive and being content. Its joie de vivre means when it's happy, it's exuberant. Its romanticism means when it's sad, it's either nostalgic or just selflessly hopeful, roaming along in a haze of comfortable familiarity (which is always changing).
Rarely does music, lyrics, and statement (otherwise known as swagger in bands like Bad Company) come together so well on an album as they do on this one. And I ask you, how can anyone so me-against-the-world love the world so much? Key theme: books.
By the way, the musicianship is astounding; tight, lyrical, and professional. Thus, a song like Asleep on a Sunbeam still wins, and when those horns drop in you'd think the album had peaked.
