Belle & Sebastian: "Funny Little Frog"

To term my feelings toward Dear Catastrophe Waitress as tepid would be to understate the matter. I still feel that Belle & Sebastian’s last long-player, despite my fondness for the goofy “Step Into My Office, Baby,” was a step backwards for the band, destined for a spot in the dollar bin next to The Boy With the Arab Strap and the Storytelling soundtrack. It wasn’t necessarily that they were suddenly oh-so-cheery (they did that quite well before with Legal Man), but rather that the song-writing just couldn’t keep up.

Of course then they followed up the record with “Your Cover’s Blown,” a song that more than makes up for a series of mediocre albums (and just about anything else, really). So now comes the new B&S album and, as the cute indie girls and sallow hipster guys prepare to make merry, we get “Funny Little Frog” as our first taste.

Not surprisingly, Murdoch et al are sticking to their cheery optimism. Hard to blame them really, even what with being Scottish and all, and at least they aren’t pulling a Robert Smith and staying “miserable” ad infinitum. Luckily, with “Funny Little Frog” they manage to back it up with a catchy little single. B&S take the Motown approach here, amping the bass line and letting those horns and guitars play up the important bits with some pretty convincingly soulful results. Murdoch, meanwhile, shows off some chops that I forgot he had, really belting out his lines of unrequited love (and rhyming “poet” with “throat” in the process, which is quite an accomplishment in and of itself). If you can forget that this is the band that put out If You’re Feeling Sinister almost a decade ago and just think of them as Stuart Murdoch & the Tempations, chances are you’ll enjoy this a whole lot more. If not, that live version of Sinister comes out next week.