8. Storytelling (2001): The band's curious soundtrack to Todd Solondz's almost completely intolerable 2001 movie, Storytelling is a mélange of ornate instrumentals, brief songs that sound half-finished, and the occasional inclusion of dialogue from the film, which is no more compelling out of context than it was within. Still, there are strong moments and one could imagine this frequently cinematic band one day creating a highly successful soundtrack along the lines of Dylan's 1972 Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid score from the Sam Peckinpah film of the same name.

7. Write About Love (2010): Having found sure footing with their previous two releases and apparently imbued with a new sense of purpose and direction, Belle & Sebastian's 2010 Write About Love marks the band's third straight strong release and seemingly sets the stage for limitless highlights going forward. The title track finds Murdoch appealingly channelling the more aggressive side of his '60s fetish, wedding a charging melody to Animals-style blues riffs to create a sound that is almost (dare we say it?) tough. Meanwhile, his surprise duet with Norah Jones, "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John," could nearly pass for Memphis soul run through a Highlands lens.

6. Tigermilk (1996): In some ways the mythology behind Belle & Sebastian's storied debut has come to overshadow and occasionally outstretch the music therein contained. Having said that, this is clearly the sound of a major talent right on the precipice of coming fully into his own. The aforementioned classic "The State I Am In" remains one of the best songs of the '90s, and other tracks like the bouncy and dark Modern Lovers-style "She's Losing It" and the ebullient Thin Lizzy-lite of "I Could Be Dreaming" are all indications of remarkable things to come.

5. Push Barman To Open Old Wounds (2005): Over the course of their career Belle & Sebastian has made a habit of releasing four-song EPs between albums, some of which (3 ... 6 ... 9 ... Seconds Of Light, Lazy Line Painter Jane, Dog On Wheels) came to contain some of the best music the band has ever recorded. Fortunately, the bulk of this material as well as a handful of other stragglers and outtakes was compiled into the two-CD collection Push Barman To Open Old Wounds in 2005. Not everything here is indispensable, but tracks like "Lazy Line Painter Jane," "Photo Jenny," A Century of Fakers," and "String Bean Jean" amongst others are a integral part of the B&S experience.

4. The Boy With The Arab Strap (1998): Expectations could not have possibly been higher following the triumph of 1996's If You're Feeling Sinister. On their follow-up, Belle & Sebastian seemed stunned as anyone else at the enormity of their success and dedicated nearly a full album to ruminating on its implications. Murdoch begins the album wryly, with a couplet about the grim fate of an upcoming artist: "She had a stroke at the age of 24 / It could have been a brilliant career." Gender aside, he may as well have been describing himself. Meanwhile, Stevie Jackson relays the minutes of being courted by industry legend and Sire Records chief Seymour Stein, who once signed B&S's heroes the Smiths. Emerging from a small scene, global success now feels likely if not inevitable. Still, Murdoch broods on hometown rivalries such as on the brilliant title track, in which he reveals himself to be hilariously and obsessively consumed with the behaviors of fellow Glaswegian ascendants Arab Strap. It's not all great but the highlights are dizzying.

3. The Life Pursuit (2006): The follow-up to the fantastic, palate-cleansing exercise Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Belle & Sebastian continue to sound fresh and revitalized and driven by a concerted sense of purpose. Murdoch's talents generally manifest themselves to their greatest extent when he is pushed out of his tranquil comfort zone, and just as producer Trevor Horn did on the previous album, Tony Hoffer keeps things lively and diverse on tracks like the near-jazz shuffle of "Act Of The Apostle I" and the persuasively terrific Bowie homage "The Blues Are Still Blue." This is the consecration of Belle & Sebastian's great reinvention, and second acts have rarely sounded so good.

2. Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003): Following the dismal Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, change was clearly in order if Belle & Sebastian had any future at all. But what manner of change, and how to achieve it? Probably no one other than Murdoch himself thought the answer was to hire the largely mothballed founder of the Buggles, Trevor Horn (best known for his production work with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Pet Shop Boys, and Seal). Whatever the calculation, the answer proved absolutely correct. On the band's funniest, most poignant releases, the production proves the perfect handmaiden to a set of songs in which Murdoch both reasserts creative control and also says goodbye to now-former member and love interest Isobel Campbell. The songs are brilliant. Lead track "Step Into My Office, Baby" is a catchy and wry take on placing a romantic come-on in a business-world setting. The antic title track commiserates with a struggling food service employee ("I'm sorry he hit you with a full can of Coke"), while never seeming too terribly put off by all of the injustice. But the centerpiece is one of Murdoch's greatest ballads, "Piazza, New York Catcher" -- a panoramic acoustic lament that somehow manages to bring together the excruciating pain of lost love with the exhaustion of a Major League Baseball season and a rational inquiry into the sexual preferences of Hall of Fame-bound catcher Mike Piazza. It is the kind of jaw-dropping work that only Murdoch and a few others are capable of pulling off.

1. If You're Feeling Sinister (1996): Tigermilk was good. Very good. But the first B&S release surely did not adequately prepare the world for the unimpeachable classic that followed. If You're Feeling Sinister is one of the finest folk rock records ever made and is easily in the conversation with any record in any genre from the 1990s. Murdoch's gimlet eye for the downtrodden and unacknowledged has never been more precise or telling than on classics like "The Fox In The Snow" and "Judy And The Dream of Horses." Meanwhile, great pop tunes like "Me And The Major," replete with generational resentment, and "Mayfly" are as catchy and intelligent as anything the band has ever done. Finally, the title track represents perhaps the greatest summation of Murdoch's themes, as it relays case-by-case the predicaments of teens looking to the clergy for spiritual answers and finding themselves again and again left without useful counsel. A church-going man himself, Murdoch lays his frustration bare, stating, "If you're feeling sinister go off and see a minister / chances are you'll probably feel better if you stayed and played with yourself." Amen.