Fifteen reasons to buy the new Belle & Sebastian set

The great Scottish twee-pop band Belle & Sebastian has just released The BBC Sessions, a 14-track set dating from 1996 to 2001. The superfans among us will find it well worth the money to spring for the deluxe edition, which includes a 12-song bonus disc recorded in Belfast around Christmastime in 2001. While the twee-est of the twee might wonder why Stuart Murdoch and company would bother releasing a BBC compilation without including their 2002 John Peel holiday set, there are at least 15 good reasons to set aside those gripes and give the new album a great big hug.

1)    It’s old-school. The band sounded different back in the day, more shambling and more precious than they do now. Their recent confidence becomes them. But there was something charming about the early days.

2)  One particular photo in the liner notes to the deluxe edition includes the band dressed up as a soccer team, with guitarist Stevie Jackson’s face contorted into a hilarious grimace.

 3)    The death-metal guitar crunch (for real) in “Judy And The Dream Of Horses.”

 4)    The thrumming intensity of “Sleep The Clock Around.”

 5)    The shimmering guitar solo on “I Could Be Dreaming.”

 6)    The slow, glorious instrumental outro to “Seymour Stein.”

 7)    The fast, surprisingly rocking instrumental outro to “Lazy Line Painter Jane,” (abbreviated here to “Lazy Jane”).

 8)    The hard, pounding instrumental outro to their cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Waiting For The Man.”

 9)    The jaunty previously unreleased song “The Magic Of A Kind Word,” which is along the lines of “Legal Man” (though not as awesome).

 10) “Here Comes The Sun,” which is a perfect choice of cover song and a joyous way to open the bonus disc. The band at its innocent best.

 11)  Isobel Campbell. The belle of the Belles left the band after their rocky fourth album Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, and—despite her one-note range—it’s great to hear her back in the mix. Listen to her go on “Nothing in the Silence,” a previously unreleased track that also features harmonica!

 12)  Stevie ordering up “flamenco-style” handclaps from the audience on “Wandering Alone,” and the audience delivering!

 13) Stuart saying “Let’s have plenty of Wurlitzer” as “The Boy With The Arab Strap” ramps up.

 14) The lyric “I’m a fan of The Go-Betweens,” one of the only good things about the previously unreleased song “Shoot The Sexual Athlete.”

 15) The swaggering opening riff of “The Boys Are Back In Town.” Then the shriek of real fan ecstasy—an un-ironic musical gesture of pure rock fun, and a primal response from the band’s supposedly sheepish fans.