He’s Intellectual And He’s Hot, But He Understands

Belle & Sebastian “Write About Love”

I’m starting to think that Stuart Murdoch is slowly stockpiling songs for an eventual Belle & Sebastian jukebox musical about the drudgery of office life. Surely we could make one just with what we’ve already got, and this title track from the new album. It’s always been a good setting for Murdoch’s characters — romantics stifled by the limitations of ordinary life — and, well, he couldn’t keep writing songs about teenagers, could he? Even still, the moment guest singer Carey Mulligan says that she hates her job on the chorus, it seems too easy and predictable. “Write About Love” is a good song with modest charms, but it doesn’t sound very inspired to me. It sounds like Murdoch doing his regular thing, which is a step backward from the ambition and craft of the band’s previous album The Life Pursuit, which I maintain is their very best collection of songs.

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Interpol “Lights”

The new Interpol album is depressing in a way that is unlike the sadness of their previous work, or really, most other miserable albums. The music itself sounds like extreme clinical depression. Most sad songs are an invitation for the listener to relate, but this stuff shuts you out. It wants nothing to do with you, but it wants you to pay attention to it. It’s like a rock band marching into the ocean, killing itself in the slowest, most melodramatic way possible. It sounds like Interpol destroying the very idea of Interpol, and the image on the cover echoes that notion. Aside from “Lights” it’s not especially good, but it’s fascinating in a morbid sort of way. I have no idea how they can come back from this — it seems like the only good options are to either break up or completely reinvent themselves.

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