Dear Catastrophe Waitress

"Seductively charismatic and packed full of tunes"
8/10 NME

Recorded at Hook End Manor in deepest Oxfordshire, and mixed in West London, 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' positively zings with West Coast summery hooks, tight, witty writing and striking melodies.

The surprise pairing with producer Trevor Horn came about by the slightly prosaic process of Horn approaching the Belles and them doing a meeting out of mildly piqued interest. Within minutes of talking to him, however, they were sold. It is important to note that the album represents something of a departure for the producer, as he reportedly normally only allows the talent into the studio to do the vocal and then layers on everything else personally in their absence.

'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' is still resolutely a Belle & Sebastian record, full of their trademark tender, joyous Scottish pop, but this record displays a newly-found confidence at the band's heart.

So, the initially Clashy garage vibe of 'Stay Loose' is matched against non-sequiturial electro elements and duelling guitars to make an unlikely but riveting six minute-plus epic. Duelling guitars of another colour raise their necks in 'I'm A Cuckoo's intended nod to the genius of Thin Lizzy. But instead of Lynott's (admittedly compelling) machismo we get Stuart's altogether sweeter and reflective take on relationship disintegration, which is both funny and heartrending as fuck, and actually contains the couplet "I'd rather be in Tokyo / I'd rather listen to Thin Lizzy-o".

"I was telling Stevie about my hopes for 'I'm a Cuckoo'," said Stuart at the time of mixing the album. "At one point I said to Trevor that I didn't care about the other tracks on the record as long as we 'got' this one. I guess I wanted it to be 'Don't Fear The Reaper' and 'Make Me Smile' and 'Virginia Plain' and 'There Is A Light' all rolled into one. And I'm just realising, it ain't going to happen."

But it is this thwarted questing after pop perfection, which keeps them driving forward. "I should learn my lesson, but then I never learn my lesson, and neither does Stevie. I guess if we ever learned our lesson we would lay down our tools and go boating instead. Do something else. But we've still got work to do. I can see the sadness in his eyes and he can see the madness in mine."

"Pretty much if each track doesn't bring me to tears with relief and pleasure combined, they don't get on the record," Stuart says. "I've got a pretty low tear threshold, it must be said, but at least you know it's costing us something."

'Roy Walker' combines 50's rock-and-roll, flickers of free form jazz and amazing Beach Boys harmonies. Further good vibrations arise in the first single, 'Step Into My Office Baby', with its saucy lyrics about "pushing for a raise" in the work environment, and other similar thinly-veiled entendres about dictation and "taking down everything she said".

Elsewhere, 'Piazza, New York Catcher' - inspired by Stuart's deep love of baseball - asks question everyone else was avoiding asking by enquiring "are you straight or are you gay?" of the Mets' legendary and somewhat "ambiguous" star. Interestingly enough considering the producer's rep, it is the 4-track demo of this track you will be hearing on the record.

Title track 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress', meanwhile, somehow manages to shoehorn a ludicrously big orchestral arrangement into its two minutes of off-the-wall strangeness. Sarah takes lead vocal on her own 'Asleep On A Sunbeam', though car or heavenly light is never entirely clear. In 'Lord Anthony' the Belles deliver a song written by Stuart in the days before B&S, which has long been a mainstay of bootlegging fans across the globe, and here it finally gets the lush strings it has always deserved.

In the end, over-running and up against it, the mixing of 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' was finished with Stuart in his pyjamas, since all the band's clothes and possessions had been sent home to Glasgow when the session was scheduled weeks previously. Cabin fever must have begun to set in because working titles for the album listed at the time on the band's diary included 'Nazi Sinatra', 'Wanker's Forest' and 'If You're Going To Get Hung For Stealing A Horse, You Might As Well Shag It'.