Indie rock bands don't put out live albums per se; they put out studio session collections, or whatever. Anything to keep from being compared to Dave Matthews and John Mayer, or whoever. Oh, and John Peel was a man among men, blah, blah, blah. It's blurry territory, but we do know that the late, great Peel, who worked on some of the sessions on Belle and Sebastian's latest, The BBC Sessions, knew how to get the best out of his guests.
Truth is, there's nothing too striking on The BBC Sessions, save for the closing four tracks. These stellar tracks -- "Shoot the Sexual Athlete," "The Magic Kind of Word," "Nothing in Silence" and "(My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique" -- prove to be of note to fans for a number of reasons. For starters, these songs, recorded in 2001, were proper "Peel Sessions," making for an instant wet dream pairing for at least 20,000 twenty-somethings around the world who wear ringers six days a week. Secondly, these songs are the final four tunes featuring original Belle and Sebastian member Isobel Campbell, who has since gone on to helm a very worthwhile solo career. Lastly, and likely the real selling point here, these tracks never appeared on any of the band's proper studio releases, which is amazing, considering the great number of catch-all EPs that Belle released along their way. Since the ’90s version of Belle and Sebastian were never known for elaborate productions, Peel's sturdy level of recording quality sounds very similar to the four albums the band released while Campbell was around, thus warranting The BBC Sessions a must-own for completists.
The other 10 songs here, all recorded before the band's first misstep, 2000's Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, sound perfectly great. In fact, they sound nearly exactly like the records from which they come, which, unless you're an über fan who will detect the two songs here that appear noticeably different ("The Wrong Girl" and "Lazy Line Painter Jane"), probably isn't very alluring. Belle and Sebastian mastermind Stuart Murdoch, chamber pop hero that he absolutely was (and still is), just isn't much for live performance. He's a master of tweaking his songs to perfection before recording and thus putting together memorable records but, as made more evident with this release than ever before, doesn't appear to give his compositions much thought once they've been put to plastic. Simply, the 10 non-Peel session recordings here will sound almost embarrassingly familiar to fans. This fact alone makes The BBC Sessions a questionable release. Why not, for example, just release the four "new" tunes as a Peel Sessions EP like so many have in the past?
Here's the answer: people who love mid- to late-’90s Belle and Sebastian really, really love mid- to late-’90s Belle and Sebastian. They love the band's since-left-behind minimalist twee pop sound so much that no more than a photo of Campbell sitting in a kiddie pool on the cover is needed to warrant a purchase. With the band sounding different (and in this writer's opinion, even better) these days, a reminder does seem to make some sense. You love this band. You remember why. You buy this album, and you be happy.
The consumer's best bet in this situation is to hunt down a copy of the special edition of this filler stocked release. Juiced with a second disc called Live in Belfast, the limited-edition issue of this record does warrant its shelf space, offering a complete live show that features fan requests, guest vocalists chosen from the audience, and three fantastic cover tunes of songs by The Beatles, Thin Lizzy, and The Velvet Underground. Stuart Murdoch singing "The Boys Are Back in Town"? Only on a rare bonus disc -- at least when in the Land of Indie.
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