I’ve had a spell of bad luck on my album rolls of late, making the decision to give away or sell three of the last eight albums I’ve reviewed, including this next one.
Disc 1497 is…. How to Solve Our Human Problems
Artist: Belle and Sebastian
Year of Release: 2017/2018
What’s up with the Cover? I believe it is a bunch of fans who got a chance to be on the cover, which is pretty neat for the fans, but doesn’t really do it for me in terms of cover art.
How I Came To Know It: I have been a Belle and Sebastian fan for years, so this was just me buying their latest and hoping for the best.
How It Stacks Up: I have eight Belle and Sebastian albums and “How to Solve Our Human Problems” comes in at #8; a well-deserved last place finish.
Ratings: 2 stars
Long-time readers will be familiar with my assertion that the vast majority of double albums should have been a single album with half the songs left on the studio floor. With “How to Solve Our Human Problems” Belle and Sebastian have created a sub-genre of this: a full-length album that should have been a single EP.
This makes some sense, given this record was originally released as three separate EPs, before later being amalgamated into a single LP. I thought I was exceedingly clever for holding out for the combined release, but in the end all I did was subject myself to three times the annoyance.
I expect a certain level of saccharine pixie pop from a Belle and Sebastian record, but this experience is usually enriched by first rate melodies and lyrics. On “Human Problems” you get all the empty bounce without the usual gravitas and emotional honesty that makes their work meaningful and relatable.
The album has a clear seventies throwback quality, but not the good part of the seventies. Think the worst of seventies AM radio pop, played in your parent’s station wagon on a stretch of road where the aerial is only capable picking up one station. Like that road trip, you can choose to swap over to FM seventies radio. The record has that covered as well, with dreamy, stoner jams from the FM side of the dial, but once again…the worst the genre has to offer. Guitar solos played inside stormwater culverts, and arrangements so saturated they struggle to make a choice and stick with it.
The album’s low point is “Everything is Now,” a boring anthem that goes nowhere and takes its time getting there. That doesn’t dissuade the band however, who include two different versions. Part One features one of the most soporific organ noodles I have ever heard.
Finally, two-thirds of the way through we reach the third EP section of the album, which stirred me from my slumber to provide some late-record joy. This doesn’t happen until song #11, and I admit that by then I was not in the mood to be amused. Nevertheless, “Poor Boy” kicks off what was once “Volume 3” with a funky groove I cannot deny.
Still intent on their own destruction, Belle and Sebastian immediately follow up that momentum with Part Two of “Everything is Now”. Enough time had passed, that the horror of Part One was now just a bitter “did I eat too much garlic?” taste in my mouth, but its return immediately regurgitated all of the unpleasantness of the original experience. Is “Part Two” better than Part One? Yes, it is, but not sufficiently better for me to enjoy the experience.
“Too Many Tears” follows. It is overblown with a lot of musical concepts, but the horns are infectious give the tune a nice anthemic quality. Following that we have “This is an Everlasting Song” which gets the band doing what they do best: wan and thoughtful melodies that trip along dreamily. The record ends with “Best Friend,” a great tune with the whimsical narrative quality you’d expect on earlier records like “The Life Pursuit.” (Reviewed at Disc 603). This is the Belle and Sebastian I have grown to love; music to make an indie romance film to. Unfortunately, Vol. 3 came to me two volumes too late to fully recover from the earlier failures.
It felt like Belle and Sebastian was trying to recapture the glory of their early EP days. Those early EPs were combined in 2005 into a single album called “Push Barman to Open Old Wounds” (reviewed at Disc 1242) and the result is brilliant. I heartily recommend that incarnation of the experience. As for “How to Solve Our Human Problems” I recommend the oppositive experience: find yourself a copy of the lovely Volume 3, and give the first two-thirds of the compilation a wide berth.
Best tracks: Poor Boy, Too Many Tears, This is an Everlasting Song, Best Friend
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