Belle and Sebastian may always be remembered for their unlikely ascent in the 1990s: the makeshift band of Glasgow musicians who became international word-of-mouth sensations and helped define the sound of the era’s sensitive indie pop. But what they accomplished in the decade-plus after their dual 1996 breakthroughs, Tigermilk and its quick follow-up If You’re Feeling Sinister, was pretty unusual too. They transformed into a festival-ready ensemble who reached new and gaudier heights, all without the pressures (or perks) of mainstream fame. Last year’s A Bit of Previous, their first proper studio album in seven years, was another improbable triumph, reinvigorating familiar themes of spirituality, sexuality, and existential crisis with an easygoing humility born of experience: Belle and Sebastian were so much older then, they’re younger than that now.
Well, surprise—again. Late Developers, announced less than a week before its release, underlines Belle and Sebastian’s uncanny ability to keep coming out on top. Before the COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020, the band was planning to record in Los Angeles with Shawn Everett, the six-time Grammy-winning producer and engineer who has worked with the War on Drugs and Kacey Musgraves. Instead, they shelved their intended L.A. songs, rearranging their Glasgow rehearsal space to write and track what became A Bit of Previous and, now, Late Developers. Like the last record, Late Developers carries the anything-goes effortlessness of sessions where, as Stuart Murdoch told an interviewer last year, “You might wake up with a tune in your head and think about the words on the way in, and it wasn’t until you got to the studio that you would nail it down with chords.” Perhaps it’s not heresy to also say: Like If You’re Feeling Sinister, this is a near-simultaneous follow-up that’s somehow even better than its acclaimed predecessor.
The characters from their first two records—who stood out for, say, being into S&M and Bible studies or making life-sized models of the Velvet Underground—inhabited a shared universe. Likewise, Late Developers extends the full-circle gesture of A Bit of Previous. Musically, the new album runs the gamut from sepia-toned folk-rock that might’ve fit on 1998’s The Boy With the Arab Strap to neon synth pop that’s as insidiously earworm-y as this band has ever sounded. As with A Bit of Previous, the emphasis is on the nuances of a large group playing together. Their nonchalant camaraderie is the password to a secret club where anyone can belong. Lyrically too, the bookish outcasts who once ruled the school are now shredding their old letters and questioning their former selfish obsessions. There are, blessedly, no specific references to present-day technology or breaking-news headlines, but clearly they’re living in the now.
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