Album Review- Belle and Sebastian- A Bit of Previous

I’ve written about Belle and Sebastian plenty, but here goes. The first four albums are every superlative in the book in my eyes. After the fourth album, Isobel Campbell left the band and the band seemed to move into a more pop oriented (or as pop as this band could possibly get) direction that has defined them since. (All writing about the band indicate that Isobel had very little creative input into the band at that the two points are coincidental. I just say the two happened at the same time). The band would title a later album “Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance” but the band in this second stage did seem to add a little boogie to their melancholy. Although it took me some time to come around, there are plenty of latter era songs that can hang with their best. At 25 years in, they have unexpectedly became a dependable rock (in their terms) workhorse, even releasing live albums. I have seen very high rated and very low rated reviews for this album. If you like the last decade of their work, I think it is good odds that you won’t be disappointed. But as a longtime fan myself, I also wish there were a couple of songs that were on the same level as the highlights of Girls in Peacetime. I think for me, this means I imagine this will place lower (over time) in rating my favorite B&S discs, but it is still a consistent listen and it is a rewarding listen, just a throwback to a bit of the “recent” previous.