Belle & Sebastian: Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Back for their first proper album in three years, Glasgow’s finest exporters of sensitive, bespectacled pop have lost two founding members, switched labels and picked up a superstar producer in Trevor Horn, whose previous credits range from Rod Stewart to Yes to Tatu. None of these events has significantly changed the band’s sound, which is good. Horn gives Catastrophe a certain amount of orchestral lushness, but the heart of B&S remains Stuart Murdoch’s songwriting—heart-on-the-sleeve emotionality that’s utterly soaring at its best and twee at its worst—it’s no wonder he’s so often compared to Morrissey. There’s a bit of both on Catastrophe: “If She Wants Me” is a lovely piece of glossy, sophisticated pop, and “Stay Loose” filters the New Pornographers through skinny-tie new-wave-era Joe Jackson. But then there’s the earnest “Lord Anthony,” an anthem about a bullied schoolboy, which is Exhibit A in what makes Belle & Sebastian irritating to those who aren’t true believers.