Belle and Sebastian
Album: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
Label: Matador
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.belleandsebastian.com

After 20-odd years you'd think you'd know enough about a band to have a fair idea what they're going to come at you with next. So here comes Belle and Sebastian, perennial indie literati, purveyors of finely crafted melodic pop with a fondness for lovely guitars and world weary harmonies… sure, they've messed around with synthesisers before, but they've only ever been kidding, right?

Apparently not. For their ninth album they've decided to go crazy with a whomping great four-on the-floor house beat driving Enter Sylvia Plath and an array of sequencers and exotic electronica given full vent on tracks such as The Book Of You. Take either song away from the album and played blind you'd be hard pressed to hazard a guess that came anywhere close to getting who made them and yet, within the record itself they sound perfectly at home. Joyously so in fact, which is probably the point.

It all starts familiarly enough with Nobody's Empire, a beautifully essayed take on Stuart Murdoch's hard-fought battle with ME. Deeply personally but set beautifully in a musical frame of chiming guitars and charming harmonies, it is classic B&S up there with anything from their 1996 debut Tigermilk or their Trevor Horn-produced chart breakthrough set Dear Catastrophe Waitress.

But by the time you're into track 3, the thumping lead single The Party Line you know you're in for a whole new set of thrills. This isn't playtime for the indie kids this is the real thing. Bold, confident and (get) downright throbbing in places although it captures B&S with their arms in the air and mile-wide smiles plastered across their faces, when you strip away all the fizzing layers of electric buzz (as they do in the run out to Enter Sylvia Plath, the album's pivotal track), you're still left with a thrumming acoustic guitar.

Sifting through the aural distractions you can hear everything but the kitchen sink - a triangle here, a cowbell there, some sweet girl group harmonies, a wistful sigh somewhere in the back - it jumps from something that's unmistakably Belle and Sebastian to a moment that could have been swept up off Giorgio Moroder's cutting room floor in 1979.

Lyrically this is every bit as deft and detailed as you'd expect from one of the most gifted and committed wordsmiths in contemporary British music. The upbeat pleasure pop of Enter Sylvia Plath (yes, we're back there again) is neatly countered by the song's saturnine wordplay - a veritable death disco anthem if ever there was.

By the time the album closer, the ethereal Today (This Army's For Peace) brings some (day) light relief to the pulsing high that have preceded it, the listener is ready for a breather but reluctant to take one in case it means it's all over. Make no mistake, if Belle and Sebastian have ever found their way under your skin this impressively poised set will be a very welcome discovery indeed.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk