The release of Belle and Sebastian Write About Love is now fast approaching so to avoid any confusion as information leaked out the band felt it was best to confirm the details of the release themselves.

The lead track, ‘Write About Love’, is available to stream on the Belle and Sebastian website here. Along with the rest of the album, it was recorded in Los Angeles earlier this year and produced by Tony Hoffer. It also features a guest vocal by Carey Mulligan. For those in the USA, the song is available on iTunes now, elsewhere it will be released after the album on October 25th.

The album itself will be released on October 11th in the UK and most other territories worldwide except for the USA and Canada where it will be available from October 12th.

As an introduction to the new songs on the album the band have created Belle and Sebastian TV, a series of televisual broadcasts. The first episode, described as ‘a half-hour mix of music, chat and revealing (and not so revealing) insights filmed in Glasgow over the last few weeks’ is available to watch here. Presented by Dougie Anderson and produced by Forest of Black, it features performances of two of the songs from the album, ‘I Want The World To Stop’ and ‘I Didn’t See It Coming’. The film also features a selection the photographs and videos submitted as part of the Write About Love competition.

Belle and Sebastian Write About Love is the band’s third album for Rough Trade and was recorded in April and May at Sound Factory Studio B. The majority of the songs were written by Stuart including one (‘Sunday’s Pretty Icons’) which was co-written with Mick; Sarah wrote and takes lead vocal on ‘I Didn’t See It Coming’ and ‘I Can See Your Future’; Stevie wrote and sings I’m Not Living In The Real World. The are also some guests. As well as the aforementioned Carey Mulligan, Norah Jones duets with Stuart on ‘Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John’ and some orchestration is added by members of LA’s The Section Quartet.

The album will be available on CD, gatefold vinyl and digitally. The full track listing is:
I Didn’t See It Coming
Come On Sister
Calculating Bimbo
I Want The World To Stop
Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John
Write About Love
I’m Not Living In The Real World
Ghost of Rockschool
Read The Blessed Pages
I Can See Your Future
Sunday’s Pretty Icons

In addition, two bonus tracks, Last Trip and Suicide Girl, will be available as a 7 inch with the vinyl edition in most countries, and with all editions from selected retailers in the USA. A further song, Blue Eyes of A Millionaire, will be a bonus track in selected digital outlets.