Belle & Sebastian: The Boy With the Arab Strap

This title sounds so dirty, I hardly want to pick up this album. The first track, “It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career” is a terrific little piece of pop bliss, but the album kind of peters out after that. After the first track? Uh, kinda. The more B&S you listen to, the more you realize this is music that should be tinkling softly over speakers in the dressing room in some lady’s boutique in SoHo. You just want somebody to scream or die or bleed or something. Man, somebody hit that f’n drum with some conviction! Plink, plink, plink. Something about this album makes me want to just throttle these guys. What happened to the sarcasm and the wit? I suppose there’s nothing wrong with easy-listening music, but what the hell is with the spoken word crap? It sounds like some dude from Trainspotting chatting over bad 007 bad guy music. More whimsy does not equal a better listening experience.