Search And Destroy: Belle And Sebastian

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

poll: which is better right now, this thread or POLLercoaster Ride - ILM Artist Poll #94 - Belle and Sebastian - Discussion/Campaigning Thread

Kind of insane how many ILXors love this band - are they the ultimate ILX band?

(They're a mystery to me, tbh)

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

same

xxp Are you, or have you ever been, a member of sinister?

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

I personally (PERSONALLY) think “Sinister” is an awful album, just the pits, and embodies some of the worst aspects of this band, as well as “twee-ness”/deliberate amateurism in general — just as surely as “Tigermilk” displays this band at its best, and embodies “twee-ness” / amateurism at its most charming and effective.

The naive drum crescendos and ducking French Horn solo on the opening track alone make me wish I could lash the album to a Wes Anderson Criterion Collection box set and launch the whole stinking package into the gnarliest tar pit on earth.

i bought Sinister on day of release due to hype having never heard a note the band ever recorded. It's one of the last things I remember buying that way (the other being the first Strokes album). can't imagine anyone thinking it's awful.

Kind of insane how many ILXors love this band - are they the ultimate ILX band?

― Monica Kindle (Tom D.), Tuesday, November 27, 2018 1:23 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When ILX first started, a lot of the first 'members' came from a B&S fan board which closed down.

(That right? A simplified version of what happened?)

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.
I feel a thread comin' on...

When ILX first started, a lot of the first 'members' came from a B&S fan board which closed down.

My memory of it is that someone on the Sinister mailing list referenced a (typically fine) bit of pop writing by T0m 3w1ng, and a few of us sought out his website, got in touch and started contributing to articles and discussions (and hanging out socially) and out of that came ILM. ILM probably would've happened without the Sinister contingent but they were in at the birth.

So, yeah, I'm not here without B&S. I met my future partner at a B&S gig in '97 and most of my social circle was drawn from the Sinister list when I moved to London in spring '98. It's quite hard to separate anything that's happened in my life in the last two decades from the moment I heard the Radcliffe session in '96. It set the ball rolling.

One day I might try and listen to those early records again (I've not heard anything since Pursuit) and see if I can get anything out of them. It's been a long time.

I think it was me who referenced Tom's essay but maybe I'm building up my own part.

Yes! I think it was you.

Wow that's awesome! Interesting to hear how it all began. Is Tom's essay available online anywhere?

Don't worry in 10 years time someone will make a documentary on ILX and all will be revealed.

Was it maybe this?
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2000/07/belleseb/

(TBH, I don't know even recall whether Tom was writing about B&S in the article Alba linked).

I think it was a best of the 90s thing

Ah, ok.

Still, the above article does have this priceless line:
"Stuart Murdoch, in fact, knows the insides of a track better than anyone this side of Pan Sonic, and is house music’s greatest loss in our generation."

It was Stevie T -- he, characteristically, knew about Ewing's writing before anyone else, and he took me to meet Ewing in Notting Hill in, I think, May 2000. The Sinister / FT crossover started there.

In fact even before that, Stevie had written in praise of Ewing's writing in PAPERCUTS.

Now that does make it feel a long time ago.

I happened to be looking at ILX and on seeing that one of the Newest Answers was Michael Jones on a Belle & Sebastian thread, thought I might have fallen back in time by about 17 years.

Which would have been good.

Come on, Tim Roger!

I have a cold

I'm curious. B&S were the instigators (in my musical landscape, at any rate) of so many songwriting/production tropes that have just become lexiconical in the intervening 20 years-- most notably, the "Neu! beats played with brushes" thing, I guess. What inspired them? People said (on the other thread) "they sounded like Love" but there's more to it than that. I can't really think of what would be the conversation that would arrive at creating this music except "The Velvet Underground s/t, but fun"

Or maybe "Tindersticks, but cute"

Nick Drake, but useless

imagine how terrible ilx wd be if a nick drake message board had helped set it up

Indiepop, + other things to make it more diverse and surprising.

Murdoch seemed to mention Felt an awful lot for a while there.

Nick Drake, but useless

Ha, this is funny. Where did I just see/read either an interview or hypothesis that one thing driving Drake's depression was that he was writing songs too difficult or complicated to play live?

Anyway, obviously B&S's wimpyness has always been part of its appeal, and what distinguishes it from other sad sacks like Drake but also, sure, Tindersticks or Elliott Smith or whomever. That's where the Smiths come on. B&S never really sounded like the Smiths, not at all - for one, the Smiths were a muscular rock band - but the Smiths were often funny about its innate woe-is-meisms, and B&S glommed on to that sort of irony. Even early on Murdoch et al. were pretty goofy, esp. live, taking the piss out of themselves, which countered the sort of pretensions that many ascribed, imo.

FWIW, American Analog Set aced the Neu!-with-brushes trope.

quick mix for anyone who's only familiar with the early stuff to help get caught up with some obvious highlights:

Stay Loose
If She Wants Me
I'm a Cuckoo
Wrapped Up In Books
Your Cover's Blown
Another Sunny Day
White Collar Boy
Dress Up In You
Mornington Crescent
I Want the World to Stop
Sunday's Pretty Icons
I Didn't See It Coming
The Cat With the Cream
Nobody's Empire
Play for Today
The Same Star

https://open.spotify.com/user/suckerblues/playlist/22MZ6qdAASHRVZq4R90mwr?si=lHBGxTBtRwa_9yyagD3jgw

I just realized I posted thi to the wrong B$S thread. oh well

So many cameos in this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvqhSMAlkhQ

I guess it was made by Lance Bangs in Athens, which explains the presence of so many E6 folks but also Corin Tucker.

As Hoffman board has Beatles, so ILX has B&S

Xps Have followed, thanks,

The other parts of the puzzle for me - Smiths, VU, Motown, Love, S&G accepted - are the Left Banke, the Zombies and Colin Blunstone.

And I wonder about that 'crutches' lyric. It might just be an unintentional echo but it's always made me think of Kentucky Ave.

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.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, November 26, 2018 3:33 PM (yesterday)

This feels like a criticism to me and I'm not sure what that criticism is. Is it that they don't quite have, say, the normal stylistic range that a comparable, well-loved group with a similar size discography would have?

Yes Zombies of course I should've thought that

Go-Betweens?

Yes Zombies of course I should've thought that

― fgti is for (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, November 27, 2018 10:32 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

listening to boy with the arab strap right now, and the intro to "simple things" is "she's not there"

I think that criticism is true of the first few albums, but there's a lot more sonic diversity and disparate genre exercises on the last few records (for good and ill). It's all filtered through their fey lens, sure, but it's a more diverse set of influences and sonics nonetheless.

xpost Hmm, I don't think it's a criticism. Or didn't mean it as such. Just that the band had almost miraculously figured what it did best pretty early on and how to do it. Very much like, say, the Cars. Or even the Smiths, I suppose; "This Charming Man" is about as good as it gets, but it doesn't mean the band doesn't get that good again. Same with LZ. Imo. Like, LZ and Smiths can be captured pretty well by those introductory early tracks, This Charming Man and Good Times, Bad Times, but the band remained good for its duration. The Cars ... less so. There was clearly a case of diminishing returns. But back to B&S, I'd argue that the bulk of the things the band has been criticized for over the years has been deviation from that initial template. Letting others sing and write, stylistic detours, etc, which even this far down the line feels kind of precarious or tentative or ad hoc, despite a long-stable line-up. Since those first couple of records it's seemingly been a constant case of "now this is the band I fell in love with!" or "finally B&S is back on track!" and stuff like that. In fact, I'd argue the band has been eliciting those reactions for longer than it hasn't.

Dunno, just thinking out loud here. It's admittedly my personal bias that for all the high points not a single album after the first couple has felt essential to me.

I watched the ...Sinister P4K documentary today and it really brought home how good Murdoch is at creating simple images of travel (he's only lucid when he's riding buses); how so many of his lyrical images are seen through windows or are of people going from here to there. It's the poetry of exile and it's got some of that pressed up against the window quality of Larkin, albeit Murdoch arguably found a way in where Larkin never did (at least not in his poetry).

Poetry of exile is a nice way to put it. It's hard to know how much weight to give his origin story, but stuck in bed with chronic fatigue seems as good a source of inspiration as any.

This thread made me go and reread the A.V. Club Random Rules piece with Fran Healy where he talks about seeing B&S' first show. Long post, but well worth checking out.

https://music.avclub.com/random-rules-fran-healy-of-travis-1798215586

Belle And Sebastian, "We Rule The School"

FH: This is turning out good. Stuart (Murdoch) is an old friend of mine from Glasgow. He and I were best friends with two sisters. His friend was called Kiera, and my friend was called Jude. His dad was a really famous Irish writer; it was a big eye-opening moment in my life to get to hang out at their place, because they were so cultured. His dad would listen to classical music in his front room and stand and conduct it. He would have loads of really cool arty-fartsy people over at the house. I was just a kid, like 16 or 17. Stuart was a really nice guy, but slightly annoying. He always pulled his cardigan cuffs over his hands and twiddled with the wool at the corner. He always looked down at his feet, and I was like, "For fuck's sake!"

I remember I was just starting out in a band, and he wasn't in a band or anything, one day he wrote a review of our show. It was like our second show, and he absolutely pasted us. He was just so horrible about it. I sat down and confronted him on the stairs at the front of Jude's house in Glasgow. I was like, "Stuart, what the fuck? Give us a chance, man." He was like, "Oh, I just thought, um, I just didn't really enjoy it." I'm like, "Fuck you, come on! It was our second show." He totally gave us a pasting, and I never forgave him.

Then one day in Glasgow at the art school—I think Stuart was at university—I think we were in second year, and it was evening. We were at the art-school bar, and there were people setting up musical equipment. I saw Stuart and I said, "Say, man. What are you doing?" He was like, "We are going to play a gig." I'm thinking, "Oh yes! This is going to be rubbish. Fucking brilliant!" So all of our mates, we all got pints, and we are sitting waiting for this horrible gig to happen, while we sit and gloat in the front row.

They were setting up and we had a few drinks. Then it all goes quiet. Stuart steps up, still playing with the wool at the end of his cardigan, and he's like, (Whispers) "Hi. We're Belle And Sebastian." "Oh God, this is going to be rubbish. He's not even projecting." He went up to the mic, and everyone is so quiet, because we couldn't bloody hear the guy talk. You could hear a pin drop and he went, (Sings.) "I was surprised / I was happy for a day" and started playing ["The State That I Am In"]. Everyone's jaws hit the floor. To this day, it was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. I was like, "Fuck! Not only are you kind of smug, but you are amazing as well." I went up to him after and was like, "I so wanted that to be shit." He was so sweet. He was like, "Thanks. Thanks a lot." That was the first gig they ever played. It was the Glasgow Arts School at the Vic Bar. They are just amazing.

I love that even the guy from Travis thinks Stuart Murdoch can be a bit much.

Mulling over what I was babbling about earlier, I think the band has always made good stuff, but it's those first couple collections of songs that earn them the reverence.

That is an awesome story.

This from John McKeown of The Yummy Fur is good too

Yeah, cos even Belle and Sebastian struggle. I heard that when they go to America they have to book a separate seat for their cello, and they don't even get the complimentary food!

No way man!!! I can just see Stuart going up to the pilot and saying "don't you know who I am?" Stuart's like the person I've known longest in Glasgow - since '86 or something. He was always like the least likely to succeed, and least likely to do a band. Stuart tried to form a Kraut-rock band with me and Lawrence once, do this, do that, and it was always" aye, aye Stuart, Another one of Stuart's mad ideas" in fact they used to be, before they did Belle and Sebastian, they were called Le Pastie De la Bourgeoisie. Me and my sister and Jamie, we lived across from Greggs, (bakery) and we spray-painted that. We wanted to do a Jean-Luc Godard meets '68 slogan, but totally empty, really empty, empty statement. But Stuart must've seen it written on the side of Greggs' wall, and took it or whatever, which I thought was quite nice.