Belle on the Ball

It was a rare but gratifying moment. The arena rammed with music executives momentarily fell into a stunned silence. Then, the words: "And the 1999 Brit Award for best breakthrough act goes to: Belle and Sebastian" percolated through fogged brains, and noiseless shock gave way to intense chatter. Some questioned the result, but most just wanted to know, "Who the hell are Belle and Sebastian?" One exec thought they might be a firm of music lawyers. Pete Waterman, producer of Steps — the chart-topping pop puppets perceived as shoo-ins for the award — demanded an investigation. And so the bookish, reclusive Glasgow group with a notorious aversion to the press hit the front pages. scots band in brits fix scandal, raged the tabloid Sun.

Of course, there was no fix. The band's intensely loyal — and Net-savvy — network of fans had mobilized their votes. Those fans have remained, but their ranks have never swelled as fast as their Brits success — and beguiling, intelligent pop output over six albums since the band first got together in 1996 — seemed to predict. Now there's a seventh album, The Life Pursuit, that again shows the septet to be more than capable of charming the world beyond the already devoted. So will this one be the real breakthrough? "I'm a late starter," says Stuart Murdoch, the band's 37-year-old lead singer and chief songwriter, from a corner table in Uisge Beatha (Scots Gaelic for water of life from which the word whisky derives) in Glasgow's West End. He's nursing a rare dram, and only a stuffed stag's head on the wall stares in our direction. But his days of anonymity may be numbered. Murdoch is talking enthusiastically about recording with producer Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air) in Los Angeles between games of football with Robbie Williams and other Brit expats. "We think the album is going to have a degree of permanence because it sounds so solid," says Murdoch, "and you can dance to it."

The faithful need not worry, however. The album is filled with trademark tales of quirky outsiders, like Sukie in the Graveyard who secretly lives in the art-school attic, and the ode to an imaginary girlfriend, Funny Little Frog. And they are delivered with Murdoch's characteristic humanity and obscure wit — it's still thinking music, so long as you think while you dance.

And the band has never remained static. When the late bbc DJ John Peel described their last Glastonbury Festival performance as "surprisingly muscular," he was observing the gradual transformation of a band often relegated to the "twee" genre — music so light and self-referential that it almost shattered upon listening — of the late '80s. The surprise choice of Trevor Horn (the ex-Buggle who also produced Frankie Goes to Hollywood and t.A.T.u.) as producer on the last album, the brilliant Dear Catastrophe Waitress, was a play to reach beyond the sensitive librarian stereotype, even at the risk of alienating hard-core fans, some of whom are, actually, sensitive librarians. Hoffer challenged Murdoch to tighten his songs, and many of the tracks were played live in the studio. But beyond the influence of any producer, the band has simply become more accomplished with time. "We could never have made this album three years ago and we certainly couldn't have made it 10 years ago," says Murdoch.

The charm of The Life Pursuit is in the unapologetic, upbeat mid-'70s influences from glam rock to MOR that frame Murdoch's often tragic vignettes. The downfall of Sukie in the Graveyard gleefully stomps along to borrowed Mick Ronson guitar and David Bowie vocals while White Collar Boy is a chain-gang romance played out to the glam swagger of T. Rex and even a hint of Marc Bolan vocals. But it's the less cool, neglected hits from the mid-'70s that most enthuse Murdoch, who still sings in his local church choir. "People really think you are taking the piss when you say you liked Hall and Oates more than the Velvet Underground," he says. The Life Pursuit takes in more familiar country and '60s soul sounds, gets funky at times and then tender when it needs to, and lyrically the characterization is as deft as ever. From the snapshots of a romance taken during a football game in Another Sunny Day, Murdoch croons: "I saw you in the corner of my eye on the sidelines/ Your dark mascara bids me to historical deeds." And female rivalry in Dress Up in You: "You got lucky, you ain't talking to me now/ Little Miss Plucky/ Pluck your eyebrows for the crowd."

It's still Belle and Sebastian, but more confident, proficient and danceable. It may not turn out to be the record that finally catapults the band to pop stardom. But then, what the hell ever happened to Steps, anyway?