The Welcome everyone to episode 71 of so de jaker on songwriting.

Joining us today is a Scottish singer and songwriter

who's the driving force behind one of the most enduring indie pop bands of the last two decades,

Bell and Sebastian.

The latest album, Girls in Peaime Want to Dance, was released in January of this year to highly

favourable reviews and as this episode reaches you, they're midway through a UK tour that will

culminate in a performance at the Sound City Festival and that's right here in our glorious hometown of

Liverpool it's our great pleasure to welcome the brilliant Stuart Mayor

Dr the show. Yep lovely to have Stuart on the podcast and we're sure he'll prove a

popular choice of guest the new album's quite a lovely piece of work, isn't it?

It sure is. I mean the song writing very much meets the standard we've come to expect from a Bell and Sebastian record,

but there's quite surprising, Sonic and stylistic departures in there too aren't there?

Yeah I mean the dance stuff isn't there like the party line and Enter Sylvia Plath?

Yeah that one's kind of almost Europop. I think he's kind of a Eurovision fan isn't he stewart.

But it doesn't sound how to play see that on the album which is not easy to pull off.

Yeah and elsewhere there's still that trademark sort of sweetness and delicacy and that air of vulnerability that's at the root of much of their appeal I think.

A couple of the songs are amongst the best they've recorded, I'd say.

Especially Nobody's Empire, what a classic that is.

That's one of my favorites, definitely. That? That's one of those songs that has a kind of familiarity to it.

And so it's got a real knack for that for writing those kind of tunes you feel you've known all your life.

Yeah, Ali is another example of that, a kind of the tunes you feel you've known all your life. Yeah.

Allie is another example of that, a kind of melody that's at once catchy,

...