Billboard

A chronological set of live in-studio musical snapshots, "The BBC Sessions" illustrates this Scottish septet's organic and determined rise to soft-spoken fame. Endearing sour trumpet and recorder notes on uptempo tracks like "Judy and Her Dream of Horses" and a stunning 1998 version of "Slow Graffiti" capture the essence of early Belle & Sebastian, while the four unreleased songs from 2001 find the group experimenting with funky, spoke-sung vocals ("Shoot the Sexual Athlete") and haunting atmospherics ("Nothing in Silence"). Those tracks were also the last that B&S recorded with Isobel Campell, and the melancholy in her voice is the perfect cliffhanger for the story of a much-loved band about to ascend into the mainstream. For completists, the first pressing includes a 2001 Belfast concert enriched with covers of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" and Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back in Town."