Belle & Sebastian – Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance

Is there a better time in any young lit-inclined introvert’s life than the release of a new Belle & Sebastian album? The answer used to be an emphatic “Never!” but the recent addition of Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, when combined with their last compilation album The Third Eye Centre means… well at least there’s a new season of The Walking Dead to look forward to.

What happened to the Belle and Sebastian we all love? Oh sure, all the old hallmarks that hooked us are there on the new LP. The sweet, naïve lyrical idiosyncrasies are present: the title, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, keeps lockstep with titles of past endeavors. There are also attempts at acousto-innocence played out around British working class narratives. But what’s this new element sneaking into the mix?

That, my friend, is upscale production value. I don’t mean to confuse. This isn’t some Americana reel-to-reel purist group we’re talking about here. Even bare basics tracks like “Piazza New York Catcher,” or “Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying,” from past albums contained some post-production work. It’s long been known Steven Murdoch has a penchant for ’80s pub-pop synth. But, on this latest work, perhaps he’s let it go a bit too far.

You see, their entire career, Belle and Sebastian has been working towards radio acceptance. Though albums have charted progressively higher, the group has never been more than a hipster reference, dropped and applauded free of charge to the band itself. While not exactly paupers, and after nearly 20 years, perhaps they were looking for Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance to finally break through into the mainstream market.

Unfortunately, in this kind of work, nobody retires and their commercial aspirations will find disappointment. Much like the Arcade Fire, Belle and Sebastian take risks on deep album, upbeat synth numbers. However, in their case, tracks like “Enter Sylvia Plath,” and “Play for Today,” or the experimental dance “Perfect Couples,” seem to grate as opposed to enliven. And this would be fine and well were their real strength — acoustic slowburn numbers like “Ever Had a Little Faith?” — solid enough to either distract from, or else carry the album in spite of the elctro-blunders.

Belle and Sebastian isn’t some fly-by-night flavor of the moment group, but neither are they above reproach. Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance isn’t a poor album by any means, it’s just not as good as a seasoned, highly creative, highly stylized group like Belle and Sebastian could possibly do.