Belle and Sebastian : How To Solve Our Human Problems (3xEP set)

Having my first listen now - I deliberately held off until the CD was available with the whole lot (and Japanese bonus track!)

Yeah, it feels like a collection of songs rather than an album, and I guess that was the intention but it's making the first listening experience a little underwhelming.

More to come later...

 

It sounds quite a lot like "Allie" from the last album to me, so I can see why it was left off. It's produced quite differently to the rest of the album, too, might even be a demo...

Some cool widdly keyboard stuff going on though!

 

Looking forward to tracking this down. The Japanese CD on Amazon is £90, which is certainly not worth it.

 

Ouch, definitely not. I happened to be in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, which is the only reason I now own this CD!

 

I think it’s a great CD

 

Just happened to come back to the album today for the first time in months. I was underwhelmed the first couple of times I played it and even more so today...

I liked “I’ll Be Your Pilot” but the rest of it really didn’t do anything for me. I know it was supposed to be a collection of EPs, but taken as a CD it’s the weakest since “Fold Your Hands” to my ears.

I’m no “early stuff or nothing” fan, either - I loved the last couple of albums but this strikes me as being way below the quality of even “Write About Love”.

Maybe I’ll warm up to it one day.

 

I just listened to this album for the first time this week after putting it off. I was a mega Belle and Sebastian fan during the 2000s but Write About Love was a crushing disappointment for me and I have fallen away from them. I listened to this three or four times this week to try to get into it and just couldn't. I agree. The songwriting is such a step down and even Stuart seems to be lacking. The only ones that captured me were I'll Be Your Pilot and Sweet Dew Lee, but they are both just good, not excellent.

It makes me so sad because they meant a great deal to me at one point but I think I may be done with this band. I think we've grown apart.

 

I do not care for this one either. I think Girls In Peacetime... is great, so I had high hopes for this. What a disappointment.

 

I'm currently on another B&S bender, and re-listening to these songs just makes me more disappointed they didn't make another album in the vein of Girls In Peacetime. I know they're not the kind of band to retread the same kind of sounds, but there was a coherency and polish to that album that is lacking here (IMO GIP is their post-90's masterpiece... fight me! ) I didn't realise until reading Wikipedia that there was quite the range of producers used on this, and you can hear it in the finished product. Here's hoping after the Boaty Weekender that they get their act together and give us something better