In the late 90s, Belle and Sebastian were one of the first bands to capitalize on the internet’s ability to unite small clusters of enthusiasts into a sizeable and vocal international cult. And they did so by embodying the very values that the internet would eventually displace: patience, privacy, scarcity. To be a Belle and Sebastian fan in North America was to play armchair detective, whether it was gleaning personal details about a band that never appeared in publicity photos or granted interviews, or simply trying to track down their records in your local music shop’s import bin. It was a situation that came about partially by choice (the band’s 1996 debut Tigermilk was famously limited to a first run of just 1,000 copies), partially by circumstance (with their first U.S. label the Enclave going belly up just as 1997’s If You’re Feeling Sinister was making waves Stateside). But what made Belle and Sebastian such a joy to discover was not just the fact they emerged seemingly out of nowhere with a fully realized sense of songcraft, a self-contained narrative universe populated by first-name-basis characters, and a cryptic (if unabashedly Smiths-indebted) visual aesthetic, but that there was a helluva lot more where that came from. The band’s first two albums washed ashore alongside a trio of equally top-notch, equally hard-to-find EPs that felt less like spillover releases than stand-alone works in their own right that subtly expanded the band’s musical scope while deepening their sense of mystique.
That moment now seems so very long ago. With Stuart Murdoch csharing the songwriting reins with his bandmates, the post-millennial Belle and Sebastian have turned both less prolific yet more accessible, more physical but also more frivolous. And while the records they’ve released since have lacked the pen-pal intimacy of their earliest efforts (they’ve gone from initiating inside-baseball commentary on zine culture to writing songs about actual baseball players), Belle and Sebastian have eagerly adapted to the digital-age gig economy by focusing on its road game: A band that once seemed like it would sooner enter the Witness Protection Program than face the public started touring regularly, taking requests, and hosting onstage dance parties. But in the process, Belle and Sebastian have more or less abandoned the EP format as an organizing principle, instead issuing non-album tracks as B-sides to singles from their full-lengths-- with all the remixes and throwaways that tack implies. Where the 2005 compilation Push Barman to Open Old Wounds rounded up the band’s entire 1997-2001 EP output into a two-disc 26-song package-- presenting each extended-player in complete, chronological sequence-- The Third Eye Centre cobbles together a cherry-picked sampling of post-2003 rarities in randomized order.
It’s an odd approach for a band that’s put so much effort into proper album presentation, but one that’s reflective of the more freewheeling nature of their post-2000 records. The formative influences-- classic country, northern soul, baroque psychedelia, glam rock, 70s easy-listening pop-- that once drifted subliminally and seamlessly through their early work came to the fore and codified into discrete, often-winking genre exercises. And on The Third Eye Centre, you get the oddball attempts that were deemed too lightweight for placement on the already frothy Dear Catastrophe Waitress and The Life Pursuit: “Last Trip” and “Stop, Look, and Listen” gussy up age-old B&S themes of romantic longing in more droll, cornball-country dressing; “Mr. Richard” sees Stevie Jackson make an ill-advised attempt at calypso patois. By contrast, the smoky ska of “The Eighth Station of the Kebab House” finds Murdoch wading into the murky waters of Middle Eastern geopolitics-- weaving a tale that’s sympathetic both to the displaced Palestinian worker and the Israeli checkpoint solder obliged to frisk him-- but the hushed, conspiratorial tones with which he imparts the lyrics add an unnecessary layer of contrivance.
Compared to the self-mythologizing narratives that lent Belle and Sebastian’s 90s output a timeless, fantastical quality, Murdoch’s more topical, contemporary concerns root some of this material firmly in the aughts. (By the time the skinny-tied power pop of “Suicide Girl” surfaced as a Write About Love bonus track in 2010, the emo-porn website was already a good five years and several scandals removed from its moment as an internet phenomenon.) You can also trace origin dates by the band's choice of remixers: the radical reworking of “I’m a Cuckoo”-- which situates the Dear Catastrophe Waitress highlight inside the namesake type of clock-- bears the idiosyncratic imprimatur of once-vanguard, now-dormant beat scientists the Avalanches; Write About Love’s winsome, wallflowery opener “I Didn’t See It Coming” gets a New Orderly overhaul from electro-pop practitioner du jour Richard X, translating the song’s yearning chorus line-- “make me dance/ I want to surrender”-- into wish fulfillment. The album’s other key remix forges an even more explicit extrapoloation of lyrics into sonics. In lieu of 2004’s multi-sectional masterpiece “Your Cover’s Blown”-- the band’s hands-down best non-album track of the past decade-- we get a jacked-up previously unreleased reworking by Scottish producer Miaoux Miaoux that heightens the intensity of Murdoch’s dancefloor panic attack (the migrane-inducing happy-hardcore oscillations practically taunt him as he sings, “the DJ’s picking up speed/ That’s something I just don’t need”), while greatly increasing Belle and Sebastian’s chances of getting booked at the next HARD Festival.
As a band that started out singing in the secret codes of clubhouse confidantes, Belle and Sebastian are fully aware of how their shifting stylistic course and more aggressively crowd-pleasing mode of performance may alienate those long-serving fans who’d prefer they still communicate in whispers. And some of the best songs here knowingly allude to that dynamic: Jackson’s plaintive piano ballad “I Took a Long Hard Look” is an affecting admission of feeling disconnected from those you once considered heroes, while Murdoch’s “Your Secrets” is a sly slice of folk-funk that juggles the comforts of insularity and the desire for more open dialogue. After being told he’s “introspective to a fault,” Murdoch errs on the side of assertiveness: “You could tell me all your secrets/ All you want to do is run and hide/ You keep it inside.” Rather than shroud themselves in mystery, Belle and Sebastian would rather blow their own cover and, for all its inherent inconsistencies, The Third Eye Centre provides a clear view of how a band that once made music fit for a library is now more liable to get kicked out of one.
