Search And Destroy: Belle And Sebastian

DCW is just front-loaded with what seemed, in the recent poll here, to be a couple of their most divisive tracks. It's unfashionable to say it out loud, but the world is still waiting for a truly garbage B&S LP!

Surprisingly, for a forum that grew in large part from B&S fandom, there has been no mention yet of the band’s new song and video "Sister Buddha", part of a film soundtrack that will be released in September.

I must admit disappoint with the song, and it is also crazy that Stuart Murdoch chooses again to use the phrase "coffee bean" (in the singular) to complete a rhyme. It was already bad enough on "We were Beautiful". Inspiration seems to be running low.

Perhaps that is a reason that Fold Your Hands has risen in some fans’ rankings. At the time of its release, it was decried as an experiment in forced democracy, handing responsibilities over to the bandmates when people just wanted to hear Stuart Murdoch. But over time, Stevie and Sarah’s contributions have become rather more welcome, and indeed on the last couple of B&S albums a lot of the least inspired tunes IMHO were Murdoch ones.

The neo-psych version on Beyond the Sunrise might be the lengthy, mostly instrumental track I lost from my mp3 library a long time ago (vocals took a back seat). I’m still not convinced it was just some mislabeled audio galaxy download. It was realllly good.

FYHC has like 5 songs that are excellent on it ('Fought', 'Model', 'Realm', 'Family', 'Too Much Love') and the rest is straight up hard to enjoy.

That said, weirdly I feel similar about Boy With The Arab Strap, and I tend to go back to Fold Your Hands more than that album.

DCW is one of their best albums.

i agree with you for the most part, Dog Latin, though i really love "Waiting for the Moon to Rise," too, and would include it among those you mention.

would add don't leave the light on baby as well

^yup

With the exception of the last couple of albums, which I can't remember listening to, Fold Your Hands remains the Belle and Sebastian album whose entire track list scans as unrecognizable to me. Like, not ringing the slightest of bells.

it's got some of their best songs on it. Women's Realm and Too Much Love definitely so.

Is there a thread for albums like Fold Your Hands which are basically 50/50 brilliant/terrible?

chalet lines is a real nadir

Fold Your Hands is great though still, at best, their fourth or fifth best album. It's really good but the first three albums set a high bar. And those of you bagging on Dear Catastrophe Waitress are nuts.

And I was disappointed by Fold Your Hands when it first came out, which was compounded by the much worse Storytelling. I was ready to write them off but DCW and Life Pursuit resuscitated them for me, and when I eventually went back to FYH I realized it was much better than I'd originally thought. The comment about fans reacting to the democratization of the band is OTM.

Dear Catastrophe Waitress is their best album.

DCW is totally unlistenable, it's all good.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Monday, July 15, 2019 12:01 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This must be in jest; otherwise, this is blatant insanity. DCW isn't the best B&S album by far, but it sure as hell is the smoothest ride and most "listenable" (if we're trying to measure that in the first place) album they have to offer.

You sure picked an unlikely record to deeply dislike, Table. As much as that doesn't make sense to me, at all, I do admire that. It just leaves me wondering why you hate this album so much? Soooo many great tunes!

Can't imagine hating "If She Wants Me" or "Stay Loose" or "Wrapped up in Books" or "Lord Anthony" or...

Dear Catastrophe Waitress is their best album.

― EZ Snappin, Monday, July 15, 2019 2:34 PM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i've read a lot of wrong things on this board. i'd almost consider suggest banning for this wrong of a statement.

Do "Wrapped Up in Books" and "Piazza" and "Roy Walker" leave you completely cold, Table? Because damn that is some harsh shit man!

Christ DCW has a good 3 or 4 of my faves, i remain baffled by the hate.

And "Lord Anthony"? Better than anything they've done after that. xp

STAY LOOSE

- lock thread -

lol I'd love an explanation of how the album with If She Wants Me and I'm A Cuckoo on it is "totally unlistenable"

I just re-listened to it.

The production is too bright— vocals much too high in the mix, for one. It's very brassy.

I think the reason why I like FYH is because it seemed (and seems) like a sort of culmination of ideas that had been explored thus far taken to their logical and baroque extreme. DCW sounds like they decided to return to exploration, but kept the heightened production values of FYH, and it just doesn't sound right to me. It didn't when it came out, and it doesn't now.

Also, "Stay Loose" is probably the song i hate the *most* on DCW.

my favorite B&S is 'IYFS' btw

i've often thought that i just don't like anything after Stuart David left, and sort of left it at that.

Has anyone else listened to the new "Sister Buddha" track? Thoughts?

Yep. Sounded a little bland, after 1.5 listens. I keep meaning to listen to it isolated from the distraction of the video...

The Dolly Mixture, Life Without Buildings and Sacred Paws (etc) content in said video is interesting.

Double live album out tomorrow, I think

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/belle-sebastian-live-album-stuart-murdoch-interview-1097170/

Listened to the first few tracks, not digging the sound of it that much.

New one sounds like the theme song to a sitcom that's set at a boarding school:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9P7EBj8LgU

So weak. They should do another soundtrack or a collaboration with someone creative/talented.

Surprisingly, for a forum that grew in large part from B&S fandom

Touching and true.

I still listen a lot to late B&S, and today I realise something:

A difference between early and late B&S is that with early B&S, I usually know what they are singing about (sometimes obstructed by unfamiliar local reference) where with late B&S I don't (not much specific reference, just generality).

If I work at it, I can see that some songs like 'reclaim the night' are about something (stalking?). 'young and stupid' does say something though it's marred by the dire spoken word ending. But I am still not really sure what 'if they're shooting at you' or 'prophets on hold' (hope that's what it's called) are about.

I think if you can't really tell or feel what a song is about, it will be harder to 'identify with it' and the song will feel less important to you.

There's also that gazing-through-a-rain-streaked-window melancholy that is mostly absent after about 2003.

Both posts otm. I also just don’t care for the production that much. Seems to lack a certain kind of energy I wanted from them. I miss the “Neu! beats played with brushes” that fgti mentions upthread.

I like more late period B&S than most, but for me they went wrong when they moved out of the church and into the studio.

re lyric content the obvious point of comparison is with Morrissey, in that he, like B&S, started out very vivid and specific, and sometimes local, in a way that thousands of people could understand and identify with.

As far as I can tell he has latterly gone down a road of solipsism, anger, self-pity, etc, which is one way of leaving that mode (but I haven't followed his music).

B&S haven't much done that, if anything have been rather jolly and bouncy and earnest, but have, again, gone into obscure *generality* in a way that has blunted them.

There is a sub-class of late B&S which does seem very self-referential and self-reflective - 'read the blessed pages' the most obvious example, but think there are others.

I meant to add that B&S's turn to generalised jollity would slightly corroborate Tom Ewing's longago claims about B&S as 'community music' unlike Morrissey's individualism.

I remember to add this because it was Ewing who started the thread, at the time I joined ILM.

https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/belle-and-sebastian/
#onethread

I like more late period B&S than most, but for me they went wrong when they moved out of the church and into the studio.

A lot of the early sessions - including Lazy Line Painter Jane iirc - were recorded in a church hall that stewpot was janitor of, I seem to remember.

The book IN THE ALL NIGHT CAFÉ talks about early recordings. I don't seem to remember it talking about recording in a church, but it's been 6 years (since reading). I thought that for TIGERMILK, Stow College (which I see closed in 2013) was the key place.

xp Exactly, yes, and even when they were recording in the studio they (don't know how consciously) reproduced the sound of that rehearsal space, until around TBWTAS/FYHCYWLAP they kind of gradually stopped. I like what Trevor Horn did with them later but the lack of that echo is one of the many reasons I don't care for FYHCYWLAP, I'm Waking Up To Us, Jonathan David, etc.

Do I need to read IN THE ALL NIGHT CAFÉ?

I don't know if you like B&S.

People who like B&S might like to read it.

Oh I definitely liked that first run of records and still do. Saw them once in NYC way back when and then some of the members a few days later downtown in the audience at a Matador showcase I think. Maybe I even used to frequent a certain now-defunct record store whose number one best seller of all time was If You’re Feeling Sinister.

I may even remember reading Alasdair Gray’s Lanark: A Life in Four Books whilst sitting listening to B&S in the day café. No Irn-Bru was present though.

Is the implication that you don’t want to vouch for the overall quality of the book but there is still some information of interest to fans?