The sweet belle of success

Some years ago Belle And Sebastian, the shyest, sweetest band in your record collection, fell out of love with all the things they had come to stand for.
There followed a wrenching break-up. Vacating the ghetto of moochy bedsit pop in search of a happier tempo and a wider audience, Belle And Sebastian scandalised their deeply devoted – by which we mean borderline obsessive – fan-base.
The biggest shock came in 2002, when the Glasgow band clambered into bed with producer Trevor Horn, sunshine pop’s chuckling ringmaster for the gauche, ardently upbeat Dear Catastrophe Waitress LP. If you are, or, as is more likely, were a B&S devotee, it is possible you are still not over the fright.
Well, put away your grimace. The old Belle And Sebastian– those delicate outsiders you once adored so – are back to their winsome, weepy finest.
This isn’t quite true, actually. For their latest incarnation, Belle And Sebastian have reclaimed the gilded ennui of their early years, but infused it with a sparkling soulfulness.
The resulting album, The Life Pursuit, is not only their most rewarding since The Boy With The Arab Strap. It is also, perhaps, their best ever.
“We wanted to do something that was a reaction to Dear Catastrophe Waitress,” explains Richard Colburn, the group’s sometime arranger and drummer. “Going into the studio we set some ground rules – no strings, nothing too elaborate.”
Recorded in Los Angeles, The Life Pursuit, seems to reside somewhere between the sunshine and the rain. Melodically, it soars and swoons, yet the instrumentation, a plaintive clatter of pianos, flutes and acoustic guitars, exudes a delicious melancholy.
“A great deal of the credit must go to our producer, a guy called Tony Hoffer, who has done some stuff with Beck,” says Colburn ( Hoffer also oversaw the first Thrills record).
Hoffer, he says encouraged Belle and Sebastian to write as an ensemble. On Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Trevor Horn promoted Murdoch to the position of de facto leader; the new record finds the rest of the band getting to ride up front with him.
“Stuart still writes all of the sings, but, in terms of arrangement and getting the tone right, this was much more of a ‘band’ album,” says Colburn. “Many of the songs came together in the studio. Whereas, on recent records, Stuart would tend to arrive in with material more or less finished.”
Dear Catastrophe Waitress was widely loathed by fans. Did the backlash prompt the dropping of Horn as producer?
“There was no conscious decision not to use Trevor,“ says Colburn. “Tony Hoffer just got in touch out of the blue and we thought he sounded up for it.“
Considering the gentle character of their music, Belle And Sebastian have suffered a rather fraught history. In-fighting marred their early years; they have shed several core members, not always in happy circumstances.
First to fly the nest was Isobel Campbell, unable to reconcile Murdoch’s stewardship with her flowering ambitions as a songwriter. Shortly afterwards Stuart David, a guitarist increasingly smitten with dance grooves , left to establish Looper.
“When a few members exited, it became easier for the band to find a direction and to stick with it,” explains Colburn. “It also forced us to grow up a bit. For a long time we’d been sort of making it up as we went along. Things got a bit messy.”
Belle And Sebastian, he explains, fell together largely by accident – their debut, Tigermilk was recorded under the aegis of a Glasgow music training scheme. During that first flush of cult stardom, the band wore their outsiders’ badge proudly and were not inclined to jump through the usual music business hoops.
The rock press was shunned; singles were always standalone. And there was a tendency to implode on stage; a 1999 concert in Dublin ended with a strop and smashed guitar: “There was a belief that we could do things our own way.”
Sometimes, this was liberating; more often it just made life harder than it should have been. The crunch came in 2001, when the band signed to Rough Trade. It was time to grow up.
“There was a meeting and we decided that, if we were to continue, things would have to change,” says Colburn. “We decided to be more professional. In the long run, it’s proved to be the right decision. We’ve never been happier with what we are doing.”