Since 1975 Green has been making albums on which two or three real songs were supplemented by material so vague and unpredictable it almost announced itself as filler improvised in the studio--which is not to say that those of us who love him passionately didn't find much of it hypnotic.

Now on a self-produced album focused around his own (frequently acoustic) guitar, the filler comes front and center with new assurance and perhaps even its own formal identity; the real songs themselves--his best in years--sound improvised in the studio.

And more than ever, it all holds together around Green's agile rhythm, dynamics, and coloration and his obsession with the soul-body dualism at the heart of the genre he now rules unchallenged.

"[10] The Bay State Banner concluded that "his new song lyrics are somewhat less tortured than the probing questions of his old hits, so that Belle lacks their tension...

[12] In 1998, The Wire included The Belle Album in their list of "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)", where the staff described it as "[a] pivotal record for Green, launched from somewhere between Memphis and Valhalla", that fused pop sensibilities with "Pentecostal fire" and which provided "the last gasp of soul passion before the adolescent cool of the post-Jimmy Carter years suffocated the US."