A Belle All Her Own

Recently, it seems a fever of nostalgia has gripped the hearts and minds of our fickle nation. We yearn for the past. Motor Trend named Chrysler's PT Cruiser-which resembles automobiles from the first half of the twentieth century-its 2001 Car of the Year. Scarcely any girls walk around in jeans that aren't flared in the style of the sixties and seventies. And many are predicting that economic catastrophe-which was all the rage in the 1930s-might be making a comeback soon.

It is comforting to note that our friendly former colonizers across the ocean appear to have succumbed to the same malady. Swansong for You, the new CD from Belle and Sebastian cellist Isobel Campbell, so teems with nostalgia that it is the Restoration Hardware of music.

"When I was a girl, I dreamt of dancing," Campbell sings in the lovely "There Was Magic, Then...," "I'd nurse my doll, would love and care for him." It's almost enough to make the listener recall summers spent frolicking in a chateau near Montpellier or dreary winters in Glasgow sipping tea and fancying the skinny boy next door. Except, of course, that the listener has no such memories to recall.

This false nostalgia saves us from a childhood that we find vulgar compared to childhoods of the past. And for the most part, the innocent and simple world composed by Campbell is pleasant. Her fragile voice-the one whose appearance on the song "Woman's Realm" saves Belle and Sebastian's latest album from utter disaster-hovers above each little tune like a feather not quite ready to land.

Not surprisingly, Campbell's lyrics betray a desire never to escape from the first grade. "Do you like pretty things?" she asks without irony on the deliciously titled "Pretty Things."

Her question brings to mind that old elementary school activity called the Pop Quiz.

Some possible questions:

Why didn't Campbell choose any of these songs to replace the dreadful "Beyond the Sunrise" on B&S's Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant?