Belle & Sebastian – The Boy With the Arab Strap Matador OLE 311-2 (1998)
While expanding upon the palette of the first two albums, and adding slightly more propulsive rhythms, this still retains the essential prettiness. Many die-hard Belle and Sebastian fans insist this is better than If You’re Feeling Sinister. I’ve long felt that it lacks the poignancy and context of its predecessor, replacing the layered production with punctuation by odd instrumentation of that prior album with a more organically woven sonic fabric. Rotating vocals among band members is sort of ineffective. Still a good one.