This is Just A Modern Rock Song

Albumbeschreibung

Belle & Sebastian still insist on making their single tracks all non-LP. They're just about the last band left in England following this once-common practice. Compare their singles to the usual two-part LP single release designed only to fleece the faithful, and B&S look all the better, particularly since they insist on quality songs, not throwaways, remixes, or ambient doodling. Too bad their singles are all imports, as some Americans are missing out on more gold from the same vein as the last two LPs. Perhaps this A-side would have made a better LP track; it's a slowly developing, seven-minute epic, but it's also an ever-building and comely track that gets more clever lyrically as it begins to bubble and grow brighter and louder. "This is just a modern rock song/This is just a sorry lament/We are four boys in our corduroys/We're not terrific but we're competent" is a sentiment belied by the beguiling textural base, an insistent acoustic in the background flanked by an even more obscured violin and muted trumpet in the further background. It swells and burbles until you don't want it to end. "I Know Where the Summer Goes" is more of the same fare, with the shadows filled this time with a mood organ, brushes on the drums, and an occasional tambourine. It's lithe and rather sweetly, slowly catchy, with Stuart Murdoch's up and down, nursery rhyme-like verse melody. The Isobel Campbell-sung, more jaunty "The Gate" and the much better piano, cello, oboe, trombone, sax, and clipped-electric guitar backed "Slow Graffiti" both waft by with equal grace, and one regrets it when the 19 minutes are over. This kind of unhurried, gentle, and friendly music is tailor-made for summertime. It's fresh flowers on a morning walk, a breeze, and cloudless sky. It's sublime.

© Jack Rabid /TiVo