Search And Destroy: Belle And Sebastian

Enochroot's top 10 B&S songs since 2010:

A Bit of Previous
Juliet Naked
Working Boy in New York City
Unnecessary Drama
I Want The World To Stop
Play For Today
Do It For Your Country
Nobody's Empire
Every Day's A Lesson in Humility
I'll Be Your Pilot

I tried to come up with a top 10 since 2010, but I could only manage 7 tracks (which gives a good idea of when I lost interest, though I still torrent each new release).

Born to Act
Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John
Sunday’s Pretty Icons
I Want the World to Stop
The Ghost of Rockschool
Enter Sylvia Plath
Play for Today

"Come On Sister" (ctrl-f: 0 results) is not only one of their best post-2010 but I'd slot it comfortably in their all-time top 10.

I don't even know some of those.

And I don't think I knew there was a song called 'a bit of previous' !

The quality of their releases also correlates with who they chose to put on the cover of the album/EP: friends >>> models >>> fans

It correlates with their cover art in general. In 2014 I read one of those DIY articles "How to hang vinyl records on your wall" and I hung up all of B&S’s albums and most of their EPs. Visitors to my home loved it. But then Girls in Peacetime came out and there was no way I was going to display that shit.

I thought the last two LP covers were a slight step up in quality.

some classic era singles and EPs have crap covers - Dog On Wheels, I'm Waking Up To Us, Jonathan David

Not sure I agree with the view that B&S cover art has declined.

Is WRITE ABOUT LOVE much worse than SINISTER? Both are nice.

Unlike poster Camaraderie, I find that DOG ON WHEELS has a magnificent cover - perhaps the most charming in their career.

But then TBWTAS itself has a cover that has always put me off, an ugly picture that says little about the contents and is only redeemed by the deep green cover.

And I'm not sure that the FOLD YOUR HANDS cover is better than THE LIFE PURSUIT.

Maybe more recent 'display the fans' is poor but then LATE DEVELOPERS (which I've never seen in reality) feels like an ep cover from 20+ years earlier.

Overall I think the covers have maintained quite a lot of continuity while also all looking different from each other (due to the colours).

A point that in Sinister List days would have been massively discussed and now maybe never has been:

'If They're Shooting At You' deliberately reuses the melody and chords of the bridge of 'Poor Boy' for its bridge or maybe pre-chorus.

It's a rare case of a songwriter flagrantly repeating the same musical material and presumably feeling it was OK do so. Maybe because few remember 'Poor Boy' anyway.