A decade has passed since Belle & Sebastian released their first two albums. More than enough time, anyway, for awkward American youths who came of age to If You're Feeling Sinister to put their own stamp on the bedsit melancholy of Stuart Murdoch and fey precursors like the Housemartins and the Smiths. Austin indie-poppers Voxtrot have been widely praised for doing just that, but professional droolerati have paid markedly less attention to talented young library-mopers from outside the convenient South by Southwest ZIP code. Math and Physics Club, for example.
The Seattle quintet's self-titled album should get some warm looks from a new generation of tender-hearted, bookish music listeners. Following a pair of solid (if by-the-book) 2005 EPs, Weekends Away and Movie Ending Romance, MAPC's full-length debut dusts off another 10 brazenly sweet songs of quiet heartbreak, late-summer acoustic guitar, reverb-laden Rickenbacker, tambourine, and occasional violin. "We've been down this road before," bespectacled singer/guitarist Charles Bert croons softly on "You'll Miss Me", and it won't take twee kids long to play spot-the-influences. But, in the words of distinguished Australian forebears (and labelmates) the Lucksmiths: "Once more won't hurt/ So let's do it once more."
Indeed, like that underrated band Down Under, MAPC tend to obsess about the weather-- and not just in their breezy melodies. The ba-ba-ba chorus of "April Showers" is a fine excuse for staying indoors, while "Cold as Minnesota" confronts a selfish lover with a bitter frost beneath deceptively cheery handclaps: "Stop wearing all my clothes and watching television/ I used to be your favorite show." The happier times and languid strums of "Holidays and Saturdays" call for swimming pools, croquet, and all-night conversations, perhaps between Field Mice listening sessions. Bittersweet opener "Darling, Please Come Home" conjures sunsets and fireflies to save a troubled relationship: "You said I seem like a stranger/ Well, I guess that makes two."
At times, the songs come tantalizingly close to discovering themselves, though no one will mistake MAPC for Tullycraft anytime soon. "La La La Lisa", with requisite la-la-las, reminisces about a nervous punk-rock crush-- how "there's just something about a girl with a bass guitar." Meanwhile, the lonely protagonist of "Such a Simple Plan" wishes for a love instruction manual while "typing away to another sad romantic on the internet." Finale "The Last Chance" offers love one more chance to conquer all, or at least another human being (oh lawd, just one). It's this unfettered sentimentality that should set MAPC apart as big-tent indie races to crown the next Dishwalla. Drummer Kevin Emerson may have a surprising funk pedigree, but this is music to hold hands to.
