Canned since 2018 and finally being unleashed upon their adoring public courtesy of the persistence and persuasion of new band member, Estella Rosa, you could be forgiven for missing the dark melancholy within The Hepburns’ Only The Hours as it is engulfed by an altogether more smooth, almost chipper 1970s sophisti-pop.
However, the sadness ‘is’ abundant and delivered courtesy of the Belle and Sebastian technique of telling nasty little stories in the most appealing ways. Perhaps ‘nasty’ is a tad too heavy for the description of these odes to the waste exposed in the lives of the normal, even if the opening and closing, First a Beak and then an Eye (overture) and First a Beak and then an Eye (epilogue) tracks, give instant clues in their dark orchestral flourishes about what is about to unfold and how we should feel after all has been revealed.
The melancholy of mundane minutiae is a theme throughout. Roy initiates the theme brilliantly illustrating a 1970s carefree childhood with references to David Soul tracks, platform shoes and shaggy hair, before ripping any sense of hope for the future from the childhood friends with a final verse of the impending doom that befalls most of us as we settle into post childhood formalities.
The tide of youthful joy recedes,
Leaves nothing except mud and weeds
Recedes the youthful tide of joy, Roy
Further tiptoes into the quagmire of the inevitably of life’s more turgid existence is revealed through faux living eulogies into less inspiring jobs such as being a bus driver (Desmond Douglas) and a postman in the poignant On The Parcels as Rosa whimsically opines:
Too old for McDonald’s, too soft for security
Too unattractive for the sex industry, so you go
On the parcels
Yeah that’s the life for me!
This nothing ever happens in ‘real life” theme is most superbly betrayed in Send This Film Back to Leni, a story about a lost camera that a young lady had tied to a balloon to record the world. When it was recovered from the branches where it had hung for a century, it was played to reveal a morose sense of nothing as obviously a romantic, gushing ending to the story would be so very atypical.
No beautiful boys
With blonde hair and blue eyes
But the poetry of the everyday
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