Belle and Sebastian, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance (Matador). It’s weird to realize that I’m still having trouble dealing with the “new,” more professionally produced and mainstream-poppy Belle and Sebastian, even though the band has been that way for12 years now, since Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Something still strikes me funny about how Stuart Murdoch thinks his audience wants to dance rather than just stare at the shoes like in the good old days. Selling out, self-delusion, or whatever else, I still dig the more laid-back stuff, and fairly recent releases such as Write About Love and God Help the Girl show that it’s still in Stuart Murdoch’s power to show restraint. On the other hand, there’s an ironic bliss to songs like The Party Line, which has tacky old disco beats and lyrics like “People like to shoot at things with borrowed guns and knives,” or  the even faster, dancier, odder “Enter Sylvia Plath.” I can get it—Belle & Sebastian has its dance-pop crowd just like Stephen King has his sci-fi Dark Tower crowd, and I don’t have to like it. There’s still plenty of other stuff for me left to like, even if I wish there were some alternate solo acoustic take of the overblown yet essentially sweet and sultry “The Book of You” that I could wallow in. And I will never completely give up on a band that can write a song (the most wistful on the album) titled “Today” and subtitled “This Army’s for Peace.”