Belle & Sebastian have recently launched “Late Developers” (Matador/Popstock!, 23), applying his own speech that time flies and you have to take advantage of it.
The new album was created and recorded at the same time as “A Bit Of Previous”, his great album of 2022, and which was born as a kind of manifesto on the need to talk about the situation in the world after the pandemic. A letter about maturity and learning in which they once again resort to large doses of nostalgia to sign an album that serves as the closure of these last critical and difficult years.
We spoke with Chris Geddes, keyboardist and founding member of the band, to tell us a little more about the creative process behind this album, the 90s electro twist that “I Don’t Know What You See In Me” entails, with the collaboration of Pete Ferguson, the secret to Belle & Sebastian’s success and what they have in mind for 2023.
“Late Developers” is an album that engages in a dialogue about the speed of time passing, the acceptance of maturity, and the enjoyment of our lives.
Yeah, that’s it, and on songs like “When We Were Very Young” we deal with those issues in a very direct way. I think as a band and as individuals we are at a point in our lives where we think and reflect on those things. Although, to some degree we always have, even on our first records there were songs that talk about looking back with a feeling of nostalgia, traveling to a past much further than we can imagine to bring it to the present with our songs.
“All you can do is just try to do the best work possible and hope that the public likes it and connects with it”
Yes, it’s true that “When We Were Very Young” would be a great song to summarize that enormous nostalgia that the album produces when you listen to it. Tell me a little about your creation process.
I don’t think we ever got to work on this song as a full band live. Stuart had written it in his head on the way to the studio one day and I don’t remember if we ever played it in rehearsal or if we went straight to record it and put the drum machine and bass into it. I would say that it all started with the voice and lyrics that Stuart brought and then the synthesizers and that kind of thing were added. Several sessions were held, we came to have a version of the song in which it was all electronic. But Stuart had a pretty closed idea that acoustic guitars should also predominate in the song and achieve a more pop sound. So yeah, it was a song that was worked on for a long period of time, compared to others that were done pretty quickly.
“When The Cynics Stare Back From The Wall” was written before you released your first album. Why was this song not included in “Tigermilk”?
Well, the truth is that simply because at the beginning of the band Stuart did not stop composing and anything that did not feel completely new lost its interest. He needed the songs to move him. I hadn’t even heard it before I started working with her on this record, not even in rehearsal. In the days of “Tigermilk” Stuart’s creative process was going very fast and it could be said that he had turned away from that material until he felt that now was the perfect time to bring it back again.
“I Don’t Know What You See In Me” completely refreshes your sound, it’s a big leap in collaboration with Pete Ferguson. Do you see yourself releasing an entire album with a more electro sound from the nineties?
I find it very interesting, I don’t know. I would, but I don’t know what will happen. You know that our records never tend to have a very consistent sound because there are so many of us in the band. Each of us brings different musical ideas and views on where we should go next. With this I’m not saying that it couldn’t happen, but we would have to build an album in which we were all in favor of growing towards that style. We are aware that some of our fans might like that style of music, but it might not be what all of our fans want us to do. So I think that, as a band, it would be pushing everything a bit and we would take a lot more risk in terms of the relationship we have established with our audience. But hey, we never make a plan for how a record is going to sound, we just start working on it and see where things go. Changing that way of working would be a huge mindset shift for everyone.
And speaking of fans, what would you say is Belle & Sebastian’s secret for continuing to be a powerful reference band and for new generations to even like it?
I think it all comes down to the songs. The fact that we’ve been lucky enough to have such a fantastic audience all this time, people who have stayed with us, is because they have connected with our songs. They feel and understand the way we as a band approach and create music. I feel like that’s something you can’t plan for, that all you can do is just try to do the best job you can and hope the audience likes it and connects with it.
The last two Belle & Sebastian albums have been created in a hard and difficult time for society. How do you see the world has changed since the songs on “Late Developers” were written?
It’s a great question. Many of the songs were written fully immersed in the recording process. And well, it could be said that in the last two or three years we have all gone through a rather pessimistic period. Especially in the United Kingdom, if we compare with the rest of Europe, because although COVID was obviously terrible for all of Europe, in the United Kingdom things were doing very badly economically at that time. We were going through a process of great political instability and things like that. So, well, what I mean by this is that we are not living in a stage in which we can say that we can relax.
The album ends with a message about the importance of finding our own shelters to protect our minds and learn to be stronger. Tell me a bit about this closure.
Yes, the song that gives the title to the album in terms of music was always one of my favorites. It’s a kind of soulful, groove, which is closer to my own musical taste. And well, regarding the message that the song transmits, some members of the band have lived through very hard times and have gone through their own struggles related to mental health. Battles that have happened both recently because of what has gone through in recent years, and in the past for other reasons. So, well, what is tried is on the one hand to put positive elements in the songs that can help people, but at the same time to pour our own stories and personal struggles into them.
Will we live this album live?
I hope so. When we go on tour again, we will try to include some of these songs in the repertoire. What happens is that now it is more difficult for us to select since we have released two new albums in a very short period of time. I would love to play all the new songs live, but we realize that when people come to see the band they want to hear old songs too. I believe that the songs grow and acquire their true life when you play them live. Only when you play them for a while do you discover which ones are the best to stay forever and be part of the concerts. But I also want to point out that in the rehearsals we did before the previous tour that we had to cancel we discovered a couple of songs on this album that we loved how they sounded live and we really enjoyed them. So I hope to share them at some point with the public.
