Belle and Sebastian: Late Developers Album Review

Late Developers’ contemporary vision is illuminated, though, by the “then.” Where A Bit of Previous single “Young and Stupid” bounced around the trapdoor of nostalgia with all the deceptive sunniness of mid-2000s Belle and Sebastian, here the A.A. Milne-referencing “When We Were Very Young” is a moodier, piano-driven number that might hit early fans a bit close to home. Murdoch’s narrator, a despondent commuter who can’t muster two shits about his prior creative passions, yearns eloquently for contentment in routine—in “football scores” and “my daily worship of the sublime”—but sorry, too bad: “We’ve got kids and dystopia,” sings the frontman, who recently turned 54. A different kind of time warp occurs on “When the Cynics Stare Back From the Wall,” a previously unreleased song written circa 1994. Ambling chamber pop with guest vocals by Tracyanne Campbell, of much-missed Glasgow band Camera Obscura, it has the feel of a lost classic: a B-side or soundtrack selection that you somehow slept on for 25 years. But its stubborn insistence on sincerity, rendered by middle-aged adults who know all too well about pandemics and political collapse, feels earned where it might once have seemed naive.

As on A Bit of Previous, Belle and Sebastian share songwriting credit throughout Late Developers, and Murdoch isn’t the only longstanding member who captures the album’s spirit of communal urgency and disquieted déjà vu. Violinist and co-lead singer Sarah Martin, who’s been in the group since before If You’re Feeling Sinister, seizes the vintage-B&S sunshine of “Give a Little Time” to make her paradoxically persuasive case for leaving the past in the past. As bass rumbles over the sprightly synth-disco of “Do You Follow,” a call-and-response affair that recalls 2004’s non-album espionage-funk gem “Your Cover’s Blown,” Martin gets in the sharpest jabs: Murdoch, asking what must be a universal question, sings, “Is it me or just the world that’s changing?” Martin, sounding unimpressed, shoots back, “My money’s on you.”

At a lean 11 songs and 43 minutes, Late Developers is packed with moments when the band’s on-the-fly energy and head-in-the-clouds musings collide in memorable ways. Opener “Juliet Naked” bristles with stark electric guitar, all the better to ponder Murdoch’s richly allusive visions of “quicksand on the battlefield,” “prayers and pills,” and the “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” songwriting duo. On the revved-up indie dance of “When You’re Not With Me,” Martin offers to “stop the clock/and make a moment between tick and tock”—a particularly evocative way to revisit yet another longtime pet concern. The closing title track, with horns and gospel-powered backing vocals, is so jaunty and verdant that more than a few in Belle and Sebastian’s demographic may be reminded of the Encanto end credits. But it’s also a cathartic unburdening. Building on the last album’s vulnerable “Do It for Your Country,” where Murdoch compared himself to a “lobster in a pot/a songbird in a gilded nightmare,” he sings here, “Who said that I had the wisdom, had the answer?/Wasn’t me.”

Proving Murdoch’s endearing openness to fallibility is Late Developers’ first single, “I Don’t Know What You See in Me,” crafted uncharacteristically with an outside co-writer, Peter Ferguson aka Wuh Oh. Eerily digestible synth pop with essences of palm-muted guitar and a maniacally catchy refrain, it feels like a late-career attempt to indoctrinate new members of the cult. What risked being a garish embarrassment should end up as a fresh hit for the band’s encore runs. Belle and Sebastian have always been focused on connection, and on Late Developers, they’re unpretentious about sharing that bond and generous in reinforcing it.

Belle and Sebastian: Late Developers