Of course, I didn't in any sense need to own Amorino. But given that I'm the type of Belle and Sebastian fan who enjoys the Isobel Campbell moments, and that "Amorino" the song has been getting plenty of spins around here since I heard it on the radio a few months ago, and that there's always a place in my heart for sweet, melancholy pop music, it was probably inevitable that the album would end up in my hands sooner or later.
And yes, it's rather good, even if not the sort of record to set one's world on fire. It comes on all film-soundtracky (in the French mode) - breezy, drifting love songs and faintly melancholy playground lullabies, woven from gentle Isobel's breathy, little-girl vocals and the sort of lightly jazzy, chamber-pop instrumentation that we always knew a solo Isobel album would be full of...tis sincerely romantic and yet still understatedly hip; gently engaging, quietly pretty, rather fey, and tres charmant.
