Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit

Black Vinyl

Released by Rough Trade

The Life Pursuit is nothing short of a revelation. Produced by Tony Hoffer, this album feels both familiar and strange at the same time. There is a powerful aesthetic at the heart of The Life Pursuit that places it at some time in the early-to-middle seventies without ever specifically sounding like anything you can put your finger on. It is more muscular than previous Belle and Sebastian albums - and there is a gravitation towards a liver, beatier sound - but unlike any of their peers, it is impossible to reduce their influences to a few key sources.

Belle and Sebastian pull in stuff from all over the place, so that Sly and the Family Stone / Funkadelic inflections ("Song For Sunshine") sits side by side with the classic bubblegum riffs and call-and-response vocals of "White Collar Boy" (another sure-fire stomping single); the "Queen Bitch-era" Bowie stylings of "Sukie In The Graveyard"; the glammy T-Rex of "The Blues Are Still Blue"; the prime-time miserablism of a Terry Hall ("Mornington Crescent") and the irrepressible rousing piano drive of "The Price of a cup of Tea". It also includes the impossibly perfect slice of Motown-pop in the name of lead single "Funny Little Frog".