Search And Destroy: Belle And Sebastian

I wasn't joking about the Riefenstahl influences!

“We Rule the School” is the best slow song. It’s their mission statement!

lol that movie also has Radcliffe + Maconie acting in it, proof that some of these ten-a-penny euro movie festivals will put their garlands on any old shit!

There’s a little bit of a creeper vibe to me when an artist over the age of (say) 30 is super into romanticizing/identifying with misfit teens.

Alfred’s album rankings are mine exactly.

prob not a popular favorite but i think my fav slow belle and sebastian song is “dress up in you”

One of his best songs. Life Pursuit is top 3 for sure.

i think the life pursuit is kinda exhausting as an album but on an individual song basis it’s still p great. only b&s album i’ve never really warmed to is write about love, which has some jams anyway

dress up in you is incredible. i agree with brad about the life pursuit--it's a harder album to "settle into" than the others

Is there a best-of album? They could have a doozy. I’d be happy to assemble one for them.

Alfred’s album rankings are mine exactly.

― Mr. Snrub

thanks!

i agree on the top 5 but for me it goes Tigermilk (classsikkk), Barman (has Lazy Line Painter Jane so), DCW (good), Sinister (big statement, slight songs), Strap (an album by a band).

― rip van wanko, Friday, November 23, 2018 6:44 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This, but FYHCYWLAP before or after Sinister

strap is the best

dirty dream no. 2 is one of my top 5 songs by them

i somehow agree with everything people are saying in this thread. where's turrican?

I've probably told this story before, but the first time they ever played Chicago they sold-out a moderately sized club. When my friend who worked there showed up to say hi, he thought the show had been canceled because it was dead quiet, the audience was so enraptured. This was right when Arab Strap came out. The same friend gave me a copy of that night's concert poster signed by everybody in the band, which I have hanging up in the basement. Somewhere around that time we ended up with a girly Belle and Sebastian shirt so tiny no adult human could possibly fit it. Both my kids took turns wearing it as they got bigger, though I don't think either knows who the band is or what they sound like.

i love the stories about how much mystique there was around them in the early days. i wonder if it's possible for something like that to happen again. i imagine not, as a lot of it was driven by scarcity.

this was my favorite shirt in high school, and then someone STOLE it!

https://i.imgur.com/g1jH79k.jpg

either that or i barfed in someone's front lawn and they took it from me as payment, who knows

I wish I could love B&S like I used to. Absolute my favourite band from 96 onwards, but moved to Glasgow etc.

I got off the wagon at Life Pursuit which I still don't like very much and it seemed such a let down and I still don't care for it for whatever reason. I've liked the subsequent post-reunion (kind of) albums to varying degrees; certainly more than LIfe Pursuit but TBH nothing after CAtastrophe Waitress ever seemed very memorable to me. They were incredible life this year though, it'd been some years since I'd seen them and I'd forgotten how good they can be.

They good.

I saw the film, its OK. I liked it a lot but its certainly not for everyone.

always thought Ever Had A Little Faith off the 2015 album really stood out among the recent albums—wistful, small, well crafted, with that classic strumming guitar touch that they mostly abandoned after Life Pursuit. Ghost Of Rockschool also comes to mind for the same reasons.

This is Just A Modern Rock Song all the way. Women's Realm is up there, Too Much Love, Sinister, Stars of Track and Field, The Model, Fox in the Snow.

I could go on and on, which has surprised me as I've not really listened to them in two years.

i really love the "push barman to open old wounds" collection. marx & engels, a century of fakers, the state i am in, so many great songs.

yeah, that's a great set of songs. similar to the stereolab ep collection, Oscillons from the Anti-Sun, in the pleasing way it offers well-known songs alongside relative obscurities, and yet it all flows well

barman was the first b&s record i bought, in high school, mainly off the enthusiastic pfork review. probably the best introduction to them i could've gotten, disc 1 has all the mystery and sweetness of the early records and disc 2 has many of the best examples of their playfully-arranged full-of-personality later sound

they're almost my vote for best band to listen to when you're sick

they're also*

My only gripe with Push Barman is the inferior version of The State I Am In

oh lord that's a great call xp

i actually think barman has the superior "state i am in," but it's the first one i heard

this is my fear, that people will hear that version and get used to it, for some reason this seems terribly wrong

arab strap was the first one i heard and all i've needed despite attempts to connect w/ the others, even if some of them are p good

xp at the time that's how most people would've heard it (as I did) because Dog On Wheels came out before Tigermilk was reissued. tbh I can't remember what the difference is

I didn't much like The Boy With The Arab Strap when it came out and I never listened to anything they did after that, did I miss anything? Oh, actually I did buy the Legal Man single. But that's it.

i think the life pursuit is kinda exhausting as an album but on an individual song basis it’s still p great

this is very otm, and i love that album

this was my favorite shirt in high school, and then someone STOLE it!

I still have that one! Didn't even make my top 3 B&S shirts tho, which is probably why it has remained in remarkably good nick.

1. Study At Stow with Belle & Sebastian (still got, faded)
2. BELLE & SEBASTIAN SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE CLYDESIDE HUNT SABOTEURS (still got, faded)
3. A Legal Man era skinnyfit ringer (STOLEN! by someone who was prolly only in it for the shirt, but I'd be too old and fat for that now anyway).

Whilst looking for those just now I also found the Bowlie Weekender one with Julie Driscoll, and "Rod And Emu: Welcome To Cambersands", presumably acquired at the same festival which, whilst maybe peripheral at best, still take me down memory lane to when this band was MY LIFE...

Going to rep for the Richard X remix of ‘I didn’t see it coming’, which turns something charming and messy into a neon lit eurodisco stomper.

Favorite band ever. I stayed with the all the way through Girls in Peacetime, but I've got a special place in my heart for all the stuff they released while they were still mysterious and wouldn't do photo shoots or interviews.
Sinister > Arab Strap > All the early EP's > Tigermilk > The Life Pursuit > Storytelling > Dear Catastrophe Waitress > Girls in Peacetime > Fold Your Hands > Write About Love

In Pitchfork doc on If You're Feeling Sinister, Stuart says that he knew, at the time he was writing them, that this was going to be his best batch of songs ever.

Storytelling is a great listen! And Arab Strap is underrated imo

I didn't realize anybody listened to the Gigi record, that's nice!

I forgot they did that Storytelling stuff. Fuck that director, I don't know who I like less, him or Neil LaBute.

I have not and will never get the love for Sinister, a weaker album than both Tigermilk and the first three EPs IMO.

it's because of all the incredible songs

Seeing Other People is good, Me & The Major too, the end of Like Dylan and the end of a few others too, actually the instrumentals at the end of the tracks are usually the best bits, but the songs themselves, I do not find to be incredible, sorry.

i prefer tigermilk slightly but it and sinister are about even imo. i didn’t get sinister for a very long time though, the songs took a while for some reason

the title track of sinister is maybe the best b&s song

B&S was the first band I learned about on the internet <3

Does not get better than the first side of Tigermilk for me, second side is good too except I don't care for the last two tracks.

To answer something from way upthread, The State I Am In was played almost every night by Mark & Lard on Radio 1 in 1995, between that and Sinister it was the only song of theirs I knew.

second side is good too except I don't care for the last two tracks.

*quietly moves “i don’t love anyone” to first place on tentative ballot*

it's great that so many people love them but nobody can agree on which tracks

We can probably agree that they are one of the few bands, like Led Zeppelin, who wrote a bunch of good songs but could still probably be well captured or defined by the first song on their first album.

*quietly moves “i don’t love anyone” to first place on tentative ballot*

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Monday, 26 November 2018 23:25 (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Tigermilk = an album culled from the first few EPs > Sinister >>> Arab Strap = Dear Catastrophe Waitress >>>>>>>