Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant

1	I Fought in a War 4:09
2	The Model 4:00
3	Beyond the Sunrise 4:09
4	Waiting for the Moon to Rise 3:12
5	Don't Leave the Light on Baby 4:41
6	The Wrong Girl 3:22
7	The Chalet Lines 2:33
8	Nice Day for a Sulk 2:34
9	Women's Realm 4:35
10	Family Tree 4:04
11	There's Too Much Love 3:27

Barnes & Noble

At first listen, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant may strike ardent Belle and Sebastian fans as a letdown after the chamber pop masterstrokes of 1997's If You're Feeling Sinister and 1998's The Boy with the Arab Strap. Favoring introverted, melancholy folk pop ("Nice Day for a Sulk" could be the album's theme song) over soulful shuffles, Fold Your Hands Child also places many of its most immediately alluring tracks at the end. (No wonder the band released the garage-pop song "Legal Man" as a stand-alone single; it would have sounded out-of-place amid the album's mostly somber tone.) Given time, though, Fold Your Hands ChildLee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra homage on Isobel Campbell's "Beyond the Sunrise") and subtler arrangements that rely heavily on strings and keyboards. There's also plenty of what B&S do best: tales of adolescent sexual confusion; vivid portraits ("The Model"); repeated themes of honesty and deception, hope and melancholy, love and isolation; and at least three up-tempo, hand-clapping, bittersweet celebrations ("Woman's Realm," "There's Too Much Love," and guitarist Stevie Jackson's "The Wrong Girl"). It unfolds slowly, but Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant won't fail to seduce lovers of literate and sophisticated pop. Steve Klinge

All Music Guide

When Belle & Sebastian canceled several dates on their 1998 North American tour after cellist Isobel Campbell fell ill, many fans cried foul; couldn't the rest of the group have gone on without her? Of course not -- {|Belle & Sebastian|} is a band in the most democratic sense of the word, a point reinforced by Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, their fourth and most ambitiously eclectic album to date. Nominal frontman Stuart Murdoch recedes into the background even more than on The Boy with the Arab Strap, allowing bandmates like Campbell and Stevie Jackson to take on a greater share of the writing and vocal duties. Also like its predecessor, Fold Your Hands Child opts for a subtle, intimate palette that reveals its charms only in its own sweet time. It may be too subtle for its own good; even after repeated listens it fails to connect on any meaningful level. The record has many intriguing ideas (like the delicate "Beyond the Sunrise," which evokes the classic duets of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and the vaguely rootsy "The Wrong Girl"), but few of the concepts seem fully developed. For better or worse, Fold Your Hands Child's best moments are those which hew most closely to the classic Belle & Sebastian sound -- that is, Stuart Murdoch songs. Though there's little advancement in his contributions, they capture the band's past glories. The radiant "Woman's Realm" is a dead ringer for The Boy With the Arab Strap's title cut, while "The Model" retreads so much lyrical and musical ground it could be a self-parody. Still, the album provokes an intriguing question: Belle & Sebastian may be a band, not Stuart Murdoch's solo project, but is that a good thing? Jason Ankeny