Album Review - Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love

Without knowing it, Belle and Sebastian have become one of my favorite bands. I enjoy the melodies they create and the poetic texture of the lyrics, which never, or should I say rarely, falls as pretentious.

Most of my appreciation however, comes from If You're Feeling Sinister, one of my favorite albums. But it gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that 8 albums into their career, Belle and Sebastian can still put out quality work. For even though Write About Love is not any kind of masterpiece, it still features that which made me love B&S in the first place. Catchy melodies such as opener I Didn't See it Coming, the most catchy five minutes in the album, I Want the World to Stop and I'm Not Living in the Real World. My main problems with the album however, are the guest vocals which seem nice in songs like the opener or even the Norah Jones duet on track 5, but sometimes they want to take protagonism from Stuart Murdoch, which is, basically why I listen to B&S and not to Norah. The other thing to note is that most of this songs don't remain in your head when the album ends, it's just when you play through the songs that you say "hey! I like this track", and in some cases like Ghost of Rockschool or Sunday's Pretty Icons, even having them played at that time doesn't make a real difference.

At times forgettable, and rarely truly great, Belle and Sebastian Write About Love is an album that will please fans, but which I wouldn't reccommend as an introduction to this great band.

Belle & Sebastian - I Want the World to Stop