Pitchfork

Once a furtive marker of recognition among like-minded obsessives, Belle and Sebastian have increasingly attracted casual listeners. Recent full-length The Life Pursuit completed the break with the band's outsiders-as-insiders origins, becoming their first album to reach the UK top 10. With the latest installment in the LateNightTales compilation series, previously curated by the Flaming Lips and Four Tet, the Scottish group poses an inevitable cred-salvaging question: But have you seen their records?

Oh, sure, they've got it all: funk, jazz, soul, hip-hop, lounge, tropicalia, IDM, Afropop, classical, classic rock, reggae, country reggae, reggae funk (but not reggaeton), and a hazy spoken-word piece by comedian David Shrigley in which an old woman dishes about her husband's "apparatus." It's never clear which specific band member chooses each track. No matter: Stuart Murdoch & Co. throw down the pop archivist's gauntlet impressively, though it often feels they're trying too hard to impress.

Like the recent Rough Trade Counter Culture comp, the disc is too varied for many one-sitting listens, but as a crate-digging exercise it yields a few directions for further exploration. The plaintive vocals of Greek troubadour Demis Roussos on his sparse 1972 ballad "O My Friends You've Been Untrue To Me" should appeal to Antony and the Johnsons fans. California soul singer Mary Love's uptempo mid-1960s also-ran "I'm in Your Hands" has the energetic appeal of the best Motown. Gal Costa's Caetano Velosi-penned 1969 "Lost in the Paradise" is swooning, horn-drenched bossa nova, while Ramsey Lewis's funky jazz entry from the same year, "Uhuru", features Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White on kalimba. Erick and Mondrek Muchena add a taste of Zimbabwe amid the dusty rhythms of "Taireva". To be fair, Tom Middleton already picked the Peddlers' sub-Sinatra crooner "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" for another compilation series, Family's The Trip, but this song remains the only good argument for a new Austin Powers sequel.

Other tracks fall deeper into novelty territory. Elsie Mae and the barrel-voiced Walter Jackson each turn in powerful performances, but their material-- a tepid "Rescue Me" knock-off and an overwrought soul weeper, respectively-- explains their lack of wider fame. It's hard to say what Belle & Sebastian were thinking when they mashed up Johnny Cash's mariachi-laced "Ring of Fire" with the West Kingston skank of the Ethiopians' "Freeman", but Butch Cassidy Sound System's "Cissy Strut" works with the classic Meters tune.

Where the compilation intermittently succeeds is in building a foggy, buzzed late-night atmosphere, true to its title. Rehash's opening "Gratuitous Theft in the Rain" sets the scene with David Axelrod-like loops, bringing to mind Rjd2, whose heartbreaking Deadringer hidden track and single "Here's What's Left" also appears. Madlib's Lootpack offers the slinky "Questions". A dancefloor rendering of the Stylistics' "People Make The World Go Round" by Paperclip People, aka Carl Craig, achieves a futuristic Herbertian sheen that almost transcends its smooth-jazz sax. Contrast that with Novi Singers' Polish-language vocal jazz. The electronic textures of Múm's "Green Grass of Tunnel" and Space Jam's 1998 12-inch "Let Your Conscience Be Your Guidance" prove even more immersive.

No worries, a few tracks also conjure the band's own sound. On "Get Thy Bearings", from 1968's Hurdy Gurdy Man, unlikely indie-yuppie precursor Donovan floats his fey, Murdoch-like vocals atop jazzy instrumentals fit for Astral Weeks, which was released the same year. Big Star's "Watch the Sunrise", from 1972's #1 Record shares the gawky acoustic glow of "Mayfly" or "I Don't Love Anyone". Stereolab melds "Eleanor Rigby" strings and joyously fuzzy guitars on 1993 touchstone "French Disko". Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like an Eagle" sounds kinda like how haters described The Life Pursuit, except this time it really is flatulent mid-70s astro-blooz, which no amount of so-unhip-it's-hip trend-speculating (BTW sooo unhip) can salvage.

So it goes: Eclecticism and obscurantism provide the tale of the tape in record-collector apparatus-measuring contests. By this standard, Belle & Sebastian's LateNightTales is a prodigious success. The band's lone recording here, a breezy, overlookable cover of "Casaco Marron" by Evinha-- a member of Brazilian a cappella group Trio Esperanca-- seals the victory, pyrrhic as Plutarch. Belle and Sebastian's fan culture may have always encouraged vinyl fetishism, but the misplaced machismo in this nugget-flaunting display seems gauche given the delicate wit of the band's original compositions. Dudes, you're not losing your edge.

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