CD Review

Earth’s de facto wimp-rock champs have returned to the cosmic ring armed to the teeth with Nerf balls, prepared to mano a mano it up with My Morning Jacket or anyone who looks like them. Bunny-prolific pushers of novo twee rock (the Barney-dinosaur-like 4-chord folk-punk that put Josef K on the, ah, map), this year’s studio release (the first, for those keeping track, since 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress) from the Scottish something-tet is an unremarkable exercise in their airy pop rock, visually articulated with the usual album cover artwork that bellows its 60s Columbia House wannabe-ism from the highest mountaintop. Undergrad nu-folkies will thrill and kick up their crook-legs to the gelded Creedence chords of “Another Sunny Day” and its near-Death-Cab experiential Fleetwood Mac 8-track patter, while “Act of the Apostle” isn’t much more than an excuse to ghoul up the old “Day in the Life” reverb knob that’s become so pivotal to the sustenance of Belle’s retro creampuff imitators, whose importance to the music world can’t be understated enough.

The real black belt songwriting comes into earshot later, in “White Collar Boy” for instance. Here we have what sounds like Norman Greenbaum invading a Mamas and the Papas session, the unabashedly pretty coed vocal harmonies doing battle with a synth imitating a Flying V straight out of “Spiirit in the Sky” as it drones away in the manner of a dentist’s XXL molar-drill. In an alternate Bushworld, tuneage like this would chart a lot higher than the #80 or so that the band has found to be its glass ceiling in the United States (they’ve consistently found themselves squatting in the UK top twenty since 1998).

While we’re beating that horsie, chances for larger US success have been accelerated by references to the band in overly clever TV shows. A 2002 Gilmore Girls episode found Rory’s egghead buddy Lane Kim pining for their latest single (thereby bolstering Lane’s terminal geek characterization, since Belle didn’t start including singles on their albums until “Waitress”), and their colors were raised again last year in the middle of some How I Met Your Mother dialog. It’s a nice switch to see stuck-up mind control experimentation like that benefiting someone other than the latest OC “alt” balderdash, not that it’s something worth encouraging.

There’s no great shortage of dogs on hand – “The Blues Are Still Blue” is drearily self-explanatory, and “Dress Up In You” could have been a Bob Saget media exploit – but it’s material that’ll nevertheless be stolen soon enough by the best and worst.

Outraged ranting, indie label release news and spaghetti sauce recipes are always welcome. Email ericsaeger@mindspring.com