Belle & Sebastian - 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' (Rough Trade)
4/5
By: Toby L
Those Scots kings (and queens) of twee-indie Belle & Sebastian are with us once more, and bless their bagpipes, with 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress', they're camper and more frivolous than ever.
A fitting debut-album for viciously eclectic, new home Rough Trade Records then, provided with added gay and jaunty-pop cred. via legendary, accompanying producer Trevor Horn manning the studio-desk. As such, we've seldom seen B&S so tuneful and intricate as this before - altogether brighter, wrier, and still piling on the lashings of charm with (not-so-)wild abandon.
Opening with the buoyant, disguised smirk of 'Step Into My Office, Baby', therein elaborate string-arrangements reside, nestling alongside scratchy guitar-solos, classic-y organs and warming, ultra-smooth vocals, conclusively bordering on a disciplined jazz-sensibility ('If She Wants Me'). Even when held back to the raw elements - a single acoustic-guitar laments and strums during an intimate, wide-eyed 'Piazza, New York Catcher' (with its predictably innocuous name-checking of 'churches' and 'cathedrals') - or merely, frankly banal ('Asleep On A Sunbeam'), it's done-so with a permanently etched smile, grace and elegance that, to resist, would be ogre-like.
Highlights, meanwhile, range between the almost train-of-thought eulogy 'I'm A Cuckoo', brass-laden sass of 'You Don't Send Me', and glorious piano-easing of a bittersweet 'If You Find Yourself Caught In Love', whilst the Strokes-y rhythmic chug of 'Wrapped Up In Books' provides a tauter edge for those that observe proceedings as merely too bijou. Alike the 60s-groove of former single 'Legal Man' crossed with some bizarre lounge-rendition of 'Ashes To Ashes', the closing 'Stay Loose' perhaps sees Horn's influence amass to a natural, final culmination - as 80s as it frankly gets, and bearing more similarity to Soft Cell than the 'Sebastian's commonly-evoking, long lost, Welsh cousins Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
Satisfyingly landmark and blissfully unaware of just how infectious it truly is, 'Dear...' is the kind of album that thrives and revels amidst any annual season; but, what with a freezing winter soon in store, it's fitting that we're provided now with perhaps the most warming of releases to shake off the frostbite and flu-y headaches, whilst grinning fulfilled in the process.
Artists in this article: Belle & Sebastian
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