God Help the Girl

God Help the Girl

BY Ian GormelyPublished Jun 19, 2009

God Help the Girl is a movie Belle & Sebastian head honcho Stuart Murdoch has written and hopes to make sometime next year. But since he is after all a musician first, he's offering up the soundtrack a year or so early. Made up of songs that date back as far as Dear Catastrophe Waitress period B&S, Murdoch says he always imagined these tracks sung by girls backed by strings, recruiting Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, Smoosh's Aysa and members of B&S to help bring the project to fruition. "Funny Little Frog" and "Act of the Apostle," both from The Life Pursuit, get re-imagined here via newcomers Catherine Ireton, who appeared on the cover of B&S's "White Collar Boy" single, and Brittany Stallings, discovered via an open call for female singers. These fresh takes are indicative of the rest of the album, which mines Sandie Shaw and '60s girl-group harmonies and at times, sounds more like the Pipettes than any Belle & Sebastian record. God Help the Girl may be a soundtrack but it more than holds up on its own, standing side by side with pretty much anything Murdoch has put over in the last decade.
(Matador Records)

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