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Dear Catastrophe Waitress

by

Belle and Sebastian

 
Dear Catastrophe Waitress
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Avg: 4.0 (587 ratings)

Fey Glaswegians shake free of the "shambolic indie" tag with a little help from Trevor Horn.

  • We Say...

    Review by James McNair

    On paper, Belle & Sebastian’s 2003 masterpiece looked a risky venture. In the blue corner: a charmingly fey indie collective whose careworn previous albums creaked and clunked. In the red corner: Trevor Horn, a producer who had brought dazzlingly slick studio trickery to acts such as late-period Yes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. What actually transpired was a match made in heaven, Horn leaving his gadgets back at the lab and enlisting over 40 orchestral players to fortify the B&S sound. “It was a great relief for someone like Trevor to take over”, said frontman Stuart Murdoch at the time. More than that, Dear Catastrophe Waitress saw his band move from black-and-white to glorious Technicolor.

    Important as Horn’s arranging skills and aptitude for the bigger picture were, the Glaswegian band met him halfway, the songwriting rivalry between Murdoch and the band’s guitarist Stevie Jackson ensuring that they showed up with a fabulous sack of songs. Witness Murdoch’s deliciously vibrant “I’m a Cuckoo” (he’s on record as saying it was inspired by Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town”), or Jackson’s “Roy Walker,” a playful pop-soul nugget that joins the notes between the Bay City Rollers, the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Swingle Singers. Before the latter song closes with the sound of a ping-pong ball bouncing to stasis, fruity harmonica, vibes, claves and clacking coconut shells have all factored in the mix.

    If there’s an oddity on the record, it’s “Stay Loose,” an incongruous if palatable slice of electro/'80s pop that conjures Men at Work, or perhaps the Cars circa “Just What I Needed.” Horn reportedly wanted it dropped from the final track listing, but it’s a fascinating glimpse at a (slightly) more edgy B & S. All told, the group’s sixth studio album was a quantum leap forward, the ace groove that propels the feather-light soul of “If She Wants Me” making nonsense of the "shambolic indie" label that some still insisted upon attaching to the band.

  • They Say...

    Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

    After the near-disaster of forced democracy on Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant and the stultifying holding pattern of the Storytelling soundtrack, where Todd Solondz brought out their worst tendencies, it seemed that Belle & Sebastian were disappearing into their own preciousness, but then something unexpected happened: they returned to form with 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress. This was unexpected not just because their last efforts suggested that B&S no longer could produce a consistently engaging work, but because their savior came in the guise of Trevor Horn, the man who successfully helped Yes turn new wave, the man best known for his synth-heavy productions of ABC and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the man who was last heard producing everybody's favorite Russian teen lesbian duo, Tatu. That diverse resumé suggests that Horn knows how to play to a band's strengths, and he certainly helps Belle & Sebastian regain their focus and vision, turning Dear Catastrophe Waitress into one of the group's best albums. One of the reasons that album works so well is that the notion that the band has no leader has been discarded, with Stuart Murdoch thankfully serving as the lead singer and songwriter throughout the record. Murdoch's songs are firmly within the patented Belle & Sebastian style, and while it may be true that he's not stretching himself much as a writer, that doesn't matter because he sounds assured and confident, turning out a set of songs that are finely crafted and tuneful. It's among his catchiest work, if not quite his cleverest, since the words occasionally offer an overdose of whimsy that leads to queasiness. And that's where Horn comes in -- by keeping the focus on the tunes and subtly varying the production, he's made Dear Catastrophe Waitress the richest musical offering yet from Belle & Sebastian. If it doesn't quite have the timeless feel of If You're Feeling Sinister, so be it, since this is their first record since that defining album to offer a similarly rich listen, and that's quite a comeback for a band that only an album ago seemed to peak too early.

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