They say all BritPop sounds the same, but it seems that someone has taught Belle and Sebastian how to do the hustle.
In this, their sixth album, and first not to be released by Matador, the delicate chamber-pop and inviting tongue-in-cheekness of lead songwriter Stuart Murdoch are back and as healthy as we've heard since The Boy With the Arab Strap. But spliced in among those usual precious tunes about frightened young girls and boys, religious confusion and valium-induced bewilderment is something very Eagles-ish.
There's a hustle beat here, a twangy riff there, and then suddenly, there's a banjo. "If You Find Yourself Caught In Love" sounds like a re-working of "The Boys Are Back In Town," complete with guitar solos in fifths. I had to put on my rodeo boots.
But the old-school B&S tracks are superb, from the bright "Asleep on a Sunbeam" and "Lord Anthony" to the trumpet-propelled weirdness of "You Don't Send Me" and the organ-heavy Animals-esque closer, "Stay Loose."
It's all in a day's work for these seven earnest young Glaswegians. Not bad for a band that was started as a project for some bullshite college class taken for a few music credits.
