After its surprise announcement at the start of the week, Belle And Sebastian have released their new album Late Developers on this New Music Friday – stream it and check out Live4ever’s review right here.
“Of all the qualities attributed to Belle And Sebastian over the years, the Glaswegian bards have rarely been described as workaholics.
“Understatement and keeping a tight control over quality meant that 2022’s A Bit Of Previous was only the eleventh studio album of a career which stretches back to 1996; it was also, thanks to the pandemic, the first that Belle And Sebastian had recorded at home by the Clyde in two decades.”
“It might’ve been reasonable then to assume that a waiting world would be kept waiting, but like buses along comes Late Developers only a matter of months later, a release made hush hush until the last minute as if a late Hogmanay surprise.”
“Its existence owes everything to a creatively fertile period for the group almost like no other, but any notion that the contents are half ideas is definitively trashed by an excitable notary in Jeff Rosenstock: the sessions’ prevailing mood, he says, was, ‘like friends in a room together communicating through music and enthusiastically encouraging each other to explore every possible path with fervour and love’.”