Smarty-pop

The clever candor of Belle and Sebastian

by Charles Taylor

Where would indie pop be -- hell, where would adolescence be -- without bedrooms? If there were no place for teen misfits and loners to withdraw into their reveries of delicious moping, to lose themselves in their fantasies of romance, acceptance, and revenge, would introspective twee pop ever have poked its head out of its turtleneck sweater?

If You're Feeling Sinister (The Enclave), the American debut by the Scottish septet Belle and Sebastian, feels like an album conceived and recorded in a bedroom. Belle and Sebastian make folk pop that's quiet, introspective, literate, catchy (by the time the muted horns kick in midway through the first track, anyone who's ever dug a Burt Bacharach arrangement has been fished in), but also removed, even a bit superior. Stuart Murdoch, the singer/guitarist/head songwriter, sings in a light, airy little voice that betrays just a trace of defensiveness about the hurt dead in its center. It's the voice of someone who doesn't get out much, the sound of a person in his mid 20s who never got past those solitary adolescent funks.

That's why though I'm willing to be charmed by the stories of adolescent longing Murdoch sketches in "The Fox in the Snow" or "Judy and the Dream of Horses," I don't trust him quite enough to let myself be seduced by them. If it were the music alone, though, I'd be swooning. Most of the 10 songs here begin with Murdoch's simply strummed acoustic guitar and gradually flower into arrangements that incorporate cello, violin, keyboards, trumpet, and (on "Mayfly") the cheesiest, most glorious fuzz-toned organ I've ever heard. ("Stars of Track and Field," the opening cut, begins so quietly you have to strain to hear it.) The sound is too held in check to be described as lush. But it's the perfect complement to the album's mood of wounded reticence.

It should come as no surprise then that Belle and Sebastian are -- inevitably -- precious. A lyric like "All I wanted was to sing the saddest song/And if you will sing along, I will be happy now" (from "The Boy Done Wrong Again") doesn't translate as much more than "I'd like to teach the world to mope." Most of the time, however, Murdoch doesn't let his sensitivity get gushy. The simplicity of the music works for a declaration of devotion like "You're worth the trouble and you're worth the pain . . . I would do the same/If we all went back to another time/I will love you over." Even those lines' confusion of tenses (just like the confusion of tenses in Buddy Holly's "I'm Gonna Love You Too") speaks for the singer's eagerness to stand by the one he loves. And the lines "Pure easy listening, settle down/On the pillow soft when they've all gone home/You can concentrate on the ones you love" call up the exquisite aftermath of adolescent dates and parties, when you try to wrap yourself up in the memories of the evening just gone by.

Coupled with the sound of "If You're Feeling Sinister," moments like that can make you feel comfortable taking what one rock critic I know calls the English-major approach to rock criticism -- analyzing the lyrics rather than describing the sound. But it's the sound that's really deceptive here, inviting you to overlook the calculated cleverness that surfaces in the lyrics. That cleverness can make you laugh, as in "Seeing Other People": "If I remain passive and you just want to cuddle/Then we should be OK, and we won't get in a muddle." Murdoch's smarts defuse the potential self-pity in "Me and the Major," a song about getting stuck on a train with an older authority figure who you just know takes a dim view of your youth and your generation ("He remembers all the punks and the hippies too/And he remembers Roxy Music in '72").

Despite the British press's persistent comparison of Belle and Sebastian to Donovan (not as enjoyably dippy) and Nick Drake (not as haunted), the obvious resemblance here would seem the combination of self-involvement and nastiness that characterized the Smiths. Nothing on "If You're Feeling Sinister" makes me want to slap Stuart Murdoch the way the Smiths' music often gave me the urge to knock Morrissey's pompadour out of kilter. The group aren't so pleased with themselves as to prevent my drifting into the pop dreaminess of the sound or being genuinely touched by the poignant closer, "Judy and the Dream of Horses." But Belle and Sebastian do keep me on my guard.