Every Awkward Fumble Should Be Framed

Belle & Sebastian “Unnecessary Drama”

Part of the long term charm of Belle & Sebastian’s body of work is the way they seem to deliberately operate at a 20-30 year lag from musical trends, gradually picking up new sounds to integrate once they feel sufficiently old and nostalgic. In the case of “Unnecessary Drama” they’ve caught up with rock dynamics of the early 2000s, which is ironic since they actually existed at that time and sounded nothing like this. Or at least the core rhythm section didn’t – aside from the core groove and the particular sound of the bass, this feels very much like a Belle & Sebastian song, though the punch of the chorus combined with the harmonic approach actually brings them closer to Twin Cinema era New Pornographers. (I saw them play shows with The New Pornographers in 2005! The slow drip of influence, maybe.)

“Unnecessary Drama” is one of the most interesting post-pandemic songs I’ve encountered, largely because unlike most artists’ impulse to approach the subject matter from a place of expressing anxiety and dread, Stuart Murdoch focuses more on the need to face the situation and figure out a way to thrive in it. This is a very Murdoch point of view – even before the pandemic, large chunks of his body of work dealt with basically the same situation of pushing towards joy and human connection through personal issues and chronic illness. Murdoch is never patronizing in doing this either – in this song he really puts a lot of the focus on the difficulties and nuisances, and all the possible mistakes that can be made along the way. But the song is asking you, even if this is your “so-called life,” what else are you going to do if not actually live it?

Buy it from Bandcamp.