Album review: God Help The Girl

***

ROUGH TRADE, £11.74

STORYTELLING has always been at the heart of Stuart Murdoch's writing. Belle & Sebastian started life as a short story he had written (which, in turn, was named after a French kids' book and TV show) before he formed the band of the same name. His lyrics are often whimsical vignettes, populated by deftly sketched characters, rather than cathartic confessionals or conventional odes to love /heartbreak. From their inception, Belle & Sebastian have often been dubbed "literary pop". They were a fitting choice to compose the soundtrack to the Todd Solondz film Storytelling.

Now Murdoch has embarked on his biggest storytelling mission to date. So far, it has involved 80 musicians, including a 45-piece orchestra, and has resulted in this album, the soundtrack to a musical which it is hoped will be filmed in the next few years, with Murdoch directing his own screenplay.

The idea for God Help The Girl came to him while he was out on a run (in Sheffield, he has specified – it all adds to the story). He heard the title song in his head and knew intuitively that it was a song for female voices, not for Belle & Sebastian, and so the notion of a girl group suite took shape as Murdoch sought to, in his own words, "have a go at building Motown in Glasgow".

The rest of the songs came first, mostly written while Belle & Sebastian were working on their last album, The Life Pursuit, and set aside, to be moulded into a story. Singers were solicited, first via a classified ad and then via the internet.

First on board was Catherine Ireton, originally from Limerick and a former Belle & Sebastian cover star. Singing the principal character of Eve, she undertakes the majority of lead vocals with bell-like clarity. Also recruited through the audition process were American singers Brittany Stallings and Dina Bankole, and local girl Celia Garcia, while other guest performances include the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, classy as always, and a sexually precocious turn from Asya of US teen sibling trio Smoosh.

The other members of Belle & Sebastian are still involved as musicians – trumpeter Mick Cooke took on the considerable job of arranging for orchestra. And so, perhaps inevitably, God Help The Girl are not such a departure from Belle & Sebastian. Two of the album's songs, Act Of The Apostle and Funny Little Frog, originally featured on The Life Pursuit. The former is reworked here with a bit of a showtune vibe to its leisurely strut, string arrangement and cooing chorus of backing singers. And if you have ever wondered how Funny Little Frog would sound if it was performed on The X Factor, the string-swathed reinterpretation here, with Stallings singing somewhat overcooked lead, provides the answer. Its pseudo-sophistication doesn't particularly gel with rest of the album which mostly takes its musical inspiration from Murdoch's beloved 80s indie pop and a candy-coloured vision of the Sixties (think The Umbrellas of Cherbourg).

The cutesy title track boasts a sweet tune, but is terribly twee even by B&S standards. "You have been warned, I'm born to be contrary, backward at school I wrote from right to left," Ireton trills coyly, while Tommy Steele and a cast of toothsome teenage girls pirouette in the background (one imagines).

Its ultimate incarnation as a film musical is a licence to visualise everything in cinematic terms, from the French New Wave stylings of jazzy instrumental A Unified Theory to the atmospheric baroque pop of Pretty Eve In The Tub.

But though the arrangements are evocative, the story is somewhat opaque. Hiding Neath My Umbrella, a cautiously optimistic duet between Ireton and Murdoch, functions more as an emotional signpost than as a memorable song.

Murdoch has described Musician, Please Take Heed as a note to self to write better songs. It must have delivered the requisite jumpstart, as it is one of the best tracks on the album, though very typically Belle & Sebastian (with a rakish touch of Franz Ferdinand) with its self-consciously clever wordplay and rhyming, and ruminations on books, vegetarianism and lust. Come Monday Night, the recent single, described as "a lullaby for an overworked boy", is another quintessentially B&S number.

By this stage, I was none the wiser on the bigger picture. Hopefully the screenplay will join the dots. But even though all the female singers come together on closing track, A Down And Dusky Blonde, it's an awkward collaboration and the subject matter – including references to hospital treatment for anorexia – hardly makes for a big jazz hands grand finale. God Help The Girl is an admirably ambitious undertaking but, as yet, we haven't heard the whole story.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Wanda Jackson

ABC2, Glasgow, tomorrow

DESCRIBED as the First Lady of Rockabilly for her pioneering country and rock'n'roll recordings of the Fifties and Sixties, Wanda Jackson is still touring, aged 71. An icon on the revival scene, she dated Elvis back in the day and was portrayed by singer Amy LaVere in Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.

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