Belle And Sebastian - Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance

I like all of them really...except Enter Sylvia Plath...not a fan of that Euro 80's vibe. It's not cheese graters on the ears...just not my can of coke.

 

Top 5 for me:

Ever Had A Little Faith
Nobody's Empire
Play For Today
Born To Act
Perfect Couples

Least favourite is The Power Of Three because of the lyrics and Enter Sylvia Plath of the europop/disco ones.

 

"Power of Three" is definitely among the most cringe-worthy songs on the album, at least in terms of lyrics, but I'm surprised "Play for Today" doesn't fall in that camp for more people.

At this point, I've actually warmed up to everything except those two tracks, "The Everlasting Muse," and "The Book of You." Easily my favorite track is "The Party Line," closely followed by "Today (This Army's for Peace)."

 

I'm surprised by the number of people who have commented along the lines of "the songs just aren't there." Crazy. There are so many great songs on this album.

 

But are they as great as the great earlier songs? There's nothing on there even as good as I Want the World to Stop, I reckon. And that song's off an album a lot of people seem to not like very much...I loved the whole album though

 

Album hasn't clicked for me yet. Ordered the 4LP box. Bit annoyed the A side of the records are cut at 45RPM and the b-side is 33. Annoying for me as I need to take off the plater of my Rega and manually change the belt by hand --poor me-huh?

 

As an early critic of this record, I will say it takes a few plays to really sink in. Even so, I still like the previous album more.

 

It's with releases like this I like simplicity of a lever to change speeds!

 

I sprung for the deluxe - no regrets! I love this album and the extras in the deluxe are essential, in my opinion. Might be my favorite since Dear Catastrophe Waitress.

B&S have settled nicely into a new groove and I love it.

 

They are absolutely as good as the earlier songs. "Ever Had A Little Faith" is vintage B&S. That song could easily have been on the This Is Just A Modern Rock Song EP. That's just one example. Of course, if you don't like the new songs, then you don't like them, but for me, there isn't one bad song on the album. The songwriting is exceptional.

 

I'm personally willing to admit I had overly negative reaction to the album when I first played it, but I've since grown to appreciate it. While I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as to there isn't a bad song on the album, or that it's as good as earlier efforts, I do think the thing that separate this album some of the others is that it takes a while to really hit you. I don't know that it's going to supplant any of my favorites in their discography, but I am glad I gave it repeated plays. That approach doesn't pay off with everything, but I'm happy I stuck it out this time.

 

I've been listening to this album lot lately (the standard cd - I don't have the deluxe vinyl so I haven't heard the extra songs or extended versions of the deluxe version), and to me it seems like the songwriting is very strong - I'd go so far as to say that I feel it is their best album overall since If You're Feeling Sinister, but that's just my opinion.

 

I still don't reckon there's anything on there as good as I Want the World to Stop...and as I said...that comes from an album that a lot of people seem to hate.

 

I love that album. "Sunday's Pretty Icons" has one of my favorite lyrics:

Whiskey from the year you were born tastes like
Kidnap and ransom and exile

 

Ditto. I love it, and also have the deluxe and standard vinyl releases. Also think it may be their best album since Dear Catastrophe......

 

Me too...some great songs on it

 

Slightly nuanced alternative: I love 'I Want the World To Stop', but I think Write About Love is the weakest album they've made (other than Storytelling, which doesn't really count). My problem with Write About Love is not that I hate it, but that it's - four songs aside - eminently forgettable to me. (Those four: 'I Want the World To Stop', 'I Didn't See It Coming', 'Write About Love', 'Come on Sister'.) I play those songs regularly, but can't remember the last time I listened to the whole album start to finish.

Girls in Peacetime... is, in my opinion, a much stronger album overall. Only time will tell if I like anything on it as much as 'I Want the World To Stop' or 'I Didn't See It Coming', but two weeks in, I'd say at least Nobody's Empire, Party Line, Book of You, Ever Had a Little Faith, Allie, Play for Today and The Cat With the Cream (plus bonus track A Politician's Silence) are up there. That's seven songs (eight on the deluxe), which is a pretty good strike-rate.

 

Yeah fair enough. I'm not saying I dislike Girls in Peacetime at all...I like it. I happen to be a big fan of Write About Love...the whole thing I like. Anyway...overall we are just lucky to have so many great songs from a great band.

 

And you know, to each their own, I guess. Apart from "The Ghost of Rockschool" and "Read the Blessed Pages," there's not a track on Write About Love I don't like. For the new one, "The Power of Three," "The Everlasting Muse," "Play for Today," and "The Book of You" all stand out to me as equal or greater duds. I've warmed up to the album quite a bit since originally dismissing it, and you know, I'd probably rate it above Fold Your Hands and definitely Storytelling, but for me, Write About Love is the superior record. And to echo what hello people noted, it's pretty great to have enough music from such a great band that we can have differing opinions on what is, really, a pretty amazing run of albums.

 

It is quite amazing how peoples viewpoints differ. Read The Blessed Pages is definitely in my top three off Write About Love. Play For Today is my Favorite track on the new record, and Fold Your Hands Child apart from a couple of duff tracks on side one probably my album of preference. Magnificent band.

 

My wife even liked it.

 

Yeah. From what I'd read I was expecting a full-blown Georgio Moroder production with a dash of Chic.

It is a marvelously-varied album. I'm enjoying it a lot.

 

Saw them last night in Hong Kong...very great...was fun. They played a handful off the latest album and they went over a treat. They played The Blues Are Still Blue for the first encore song. Audio was record like, they sounded superb.

 

Question for anyone with the 4-LP set or CD:

I've listened to the 2-LP several times now, and the digital copy that came with it a lot, and I've noticed that Nobody's Empire has two different mixes. The "LP version" has more synth in the intro, has Stevie's backing vocals start in verse 4 ("lying on my side...") instead of verse 5 ("now I look at you...") and seems to have a different lead vocal track, at least in parts (easiest way to tell is the LP has "if we live by the books", digital is simply "if we live by books").

When the NPR live stream debuted just before release, the "LP version" was used and the different intro stood out straight away over the one they'd uploaded to YouTube ("digital version"), which makes me wonder where NPR sourced that version from? CD? I guess my question is, what version does the box set and CD use?

Not a huge fan of The Power of Three's lyrics either, but love the music. They played the hell out of it when I saw them in Perth at the start of Feb, one of the highlights (aside from them playing my request, Women's Realm!)

We ended up getting only one encore song as the show went a bit too long... made up for the fact that they let an audience member pick the song (Expectations) and they were concerned the trumpeter they hired mightn't be able to play it (he did great). They're brilliant live, aren't they?

 

The Bristol tickets are now in hand and judging by your reviews it should be yet another great show. May the fourth be with me.