Album Review: Belle and Sebastian – “Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance”

By: Daniel Gerichter (@ZenDonut) –

Belle and Sebastian’s masterful new album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, is a snapshot of the band for the ages: so influential are this group of twee songwriters (easily discerned from a quick glance at the shoegaze genre) that the influence of their catalogue may even extend to their contemporary selves.

Iconic producer Tony Hoffer (Beck, M83, Arkells) from their 2010 album Belle and Sebastian Sing about Love, bolstered the band’s strengths: textured and elegant melodies, and harmonies for solitude and togetherness alike. Enlisting producer Ben H Allen (Animal Collective, Bombay Bicycle Club) this time around, the band play their strengths forward, Drawing on Allen’s solid reputation for adding, textures and ambience to bands who’ve locked down their sense for melodic composition.

The album’s title is a misdirection as to Belle and Sebastian‘s intentions: as political as they are, they restrain from adding to the glut of tiresome political missives and remain committed as ever to the dulcet pop songs that you know and love. Despite an increasingly grizzled attitude toward his own craft (see his opinion of Eurovision for an example ), Stuart Murdoch’s songwriting and lyrics are as on-point as ever.

The album’s lead-in track “Nobody’s Empire” sets the album’s tone immediately, hewing closely to the band’s tendency to be maudlin but never morose. Murdoch croons “I was like a child, I was light as straw / When my father lifted me up there / Took me to a place where they checked my body / My soul was floating in thin air”. Murdoch has grown as an artist, possibly owing to his recent filmmaking venture with 2014 film God Help the Girl, that helped him flesh out lyrical worlds and characters that are closely resemble his own, but remain fantastical all the same.

Musically, the band isn’t afraid to leave their comfort zone either. On “The Power of Three”, the band seems hesitant to wade into psychedelic-funk-disco territory, while on “Enter Sylvia Plath”, they fully submerge in the deep end – fully embracing New Order as if that was their sound all along. Their pithiness never wanders away though. Murdoch quips “In this place and time / easy is the first escape” almost to see if you’re paying attention while cutting a rug. Keyboardist Sarah Martin and guitarist Stevie Jackson get turns on “The Power of Three” and “Perfect Couples” respectively, enforcing the idea that Belle and Sebastian (despite their changes through the years) have been a democracy, as opposed to Murdoch’s dictatorship.

Throughout the album, jangly guitars and eerie harmonies remain a staple, but Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance proves more than anything that Belle and Sebastian have learned how to play to their strengths: to evolve while keeping the home fires burning for fans who’ve loved them all along.

Essential Tracks: “Enter Sylvia Plath”, “the Power of Three”, “Nobody’s Empire”