Search And Destroy: Belle And Sebastian

girls in peacetime is my favorite post-sinister lp. the songs are just so good

"Nobody's Empire" has the line "Now I look at you, you’re a mother of two / You’re a quiet revolution". I had assumed this was a reference to Murdoch's own wife and kids, but Genius says it concerns an acquaintance. Same difference, though.

Once you’ve seen one kid you’ve seen ‘em all.

OTM

Now we're old with creaking bones
Some with partners, some alone
Some with kids and some with dogs
Getting through the nightly slog

We've come a long way from making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay

I don’t know that song, but those lines are pretty good, IMO

(if he can no longer credibly write about young people, this seems like what he should be writing about?)

It’s time for songs from the point of view of Doris, the supervisor

_Now we're old with creaking bones
Some with partners, some alone
Some with kids and some with dogs
Getting through the nightly slog
_


We've come a long way from making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay

And still nobody has explained to me how Lazy Line Painter Jane got her name.

She had a lazy eye but they didn’t let her go blind like Lisa?

"Nobody's Empire" has the line "Now I look at you, you’re a mother of two / You’re a quiet revolution". I had assumed this was a reference to Murdoch's own wife and kids, but Genius says it concerns an acquaintance. Same difference, though.

This post seems to say: not only should people not write about their children, also no-one should write a song about someone else who has had children.

I don't think that's reasonable.

I agree with poster morrisp: the lines from 'young and stupid' are OK. They refer to reality and they say something quite comprehensible. They're somewhat better, I think, than the more vapid and elusive generalities I was referring to way above with the thread revive.

'Dogs' takes us back somewhat to 'I love my car' and the dogs on the cover of that ep.

BTW my first copy of TIGERMILK was the same sort of tape of a tape, from vinyl I believe - I suspect that the same record was at the root of all these recordings - in I think 1997. I played it a lot but it made too little impression till one day on a bus I played it again and finally it sounded important and exciting. As it happened that was just when TIGERMILK was also released on CD (July 1999).

DESTROY: The ones about how independent and cool it is to be B & S or a member thereof. "Seymour Stein", "Chickfactor", "Family Tree" etc. etc. "Beyond The Sunrise" is a natural D-Side but as Hazlewood knockoffs go it's not an awful one.

― Tom, Monday, February 5, 2001

Possibly underrated post.

"This post seems to say: not only should people not write about their children, also no-one should write a song about someone else who has had children."

"Nobody’s Empire" exists in a context: it’s a looking-back-decades song about an acquaintance settled down with children, when the songwriter himself is also long since settled down. It just underscores how this band is now far removed from the scene and concerns that got them their fan base and recognition, because you can't imagine any of the bohemian or angsty protagonists of the early records' songs expressing domestic contentedness.

B&S have maintained the same band name, still play those classic songs, and have new songs and album photography that still center young people, but they are clearly old people now. I just suggested this is one reason why people might feel the records after year X are less magical or convincing than the early ones.

They're not old people - they're middle-aged.

You don't get a state pension here till about 67!

I mostly agree with that description of that song, though it's notable that the song is in fact, as far as I recall, very 'angsty' indeed - talking about doubt, despair, whatever, which the singer has, perhaps, come through. I don't think it's a serene and smug song.

I agree that 'marital contentment' etc is potentially less interesting than other topics or moods, but this is still, surely, only a minority of late B&S songs. Most of them are about something else?

Just tried to listen to the latest one and I gotta say I can barely even stand Stuart’s voice. It’s like his early voice stood still and backslid a bit while it lost the supportive context that made it work. It’s as if Elvis sang “Suspicious Minds” (or “Clambake” even tbh) in his “Baby, Let’s Play House” voice except, well…

the world needs a good "40 years of brutal, diminishing, codependence, ending with horrible illness and loss" songwriter. but also sometimes twee. i think he'll get there.

And still nobody has explained to me how Lazy Line Painter Jane got her name.

She painted the yellow lines that followed the roads she had traveled on a canvas? If she was lazy about painting or traveling (or attributed to laziness something else) maybe the canvas would not have to be so large.

https://www.heartachewithhardwork.com/2009/08/please-stop-me-there-im-even-boring-myself.html

^Title is a lie though

> I’m gonna say that was a tape of a tape...

vinyl -> minidisk (with added session tracks, demos) -> tape -> pam, i think, depending on when it was done

a different lifetime

(one without mp3s)

I think that's what I had, Koogs: the extra tracks included 'London has let me down again', 'Hurley's having dreams', 'Pocketbook Angel' ?

Is there a way to hear those now? Surprised they’ve never done an expanded reissue…

I had the same tape, from someone on s******r, long forgotten who it was.
tigermilk + demos + bbc radio scotland interview where they chose these songs:

Tom Waits - The Earth Dies Screaming
Glen Campbell & Bobby Gentry - Little Green Apples
Queen - Don't Stop Me Now

Never heard the interview, wasn't part of the package for me.

It's odd that those earliest songs have never been formally released. Some of them were at least as good as most of B&S's later work.

I’m gonna say that was a tape of a tape

I think Pocketbook Angel etc were pretty much Stuart Murdoch solo demos, pre-band, so maybe that explains why they’ve never been released, at least under the B&S name.

well there was Rhode Island before there was B&S. played before the pastels at a neil street rough trade shop in-store the once.

Re: the name "Lazy Line Painter Jane," the best explanation I read was this: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858525114/?&specific_com=73015023512#comments
As for the whole song, this explains a lot: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858525114/?&specific_com=73015735651#comments

For those who got off the B&S bus after, say, DCW or TLP, I would suggest trying the first five songs of "Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance"; the whole album is solid (definitely my favorite since TLP), but I put those five songs on repeat regularly.
I also really loved "God Help the Girl" and Catherine Ireton's singing especially - "Come Monday Night" is absolutely perfect, and "A Down and Dusky Blonde" goes through my head all the time (I love those biting lyrical tidbits..."forgive yourself and eat," "trick photography on speed," "the truth is crushing like a heel" etc.) Don't bother with the soundtrack album, though.

That’s a good reading of the song, but I think think "And you hope that she/they will see" refers to the girl/boy that she will have tonight.

(I’m also not sure about the “kit for games” verse, but it’s pretty opaque)

tbh, most of that explanation doesn't ring accurate to me.

The 'kit for games' verse, she's forgotten her proper kit but games is compulsory. So, she borrows a boys jumper (doubtless he's got his own proper kit) and still is a better runner than the rest of 'em.

Licking railings, I don't know so I can't say it's wrong as such. Anyone else heard similar?

I also thought “licking railings” was literal (like the jumper); that write-up makes a good case that’s it not… but is that, like, a known euphemism(?)

I thought she was so weird/unstable that she literally went around licking railings.

Rhode Island must have played ... 'Rhoda'?

I shouldn't have clicked on the LLPJ analysis page. Unpleasant.

I do think that many of the songs on GOD HELP THE GIRL are surprisingly excellent. I don't know who the singers are, and always had trouble with them. I haven't heard the other LP of it and don't know why there are two LPs.

Rishi Sunak will make a speech to Cop making the cause for ‘clean growth’. Wealth creation without wrecking the planet. I don’t care which party he speaks for, I support this statement and believe it is possible, and a way to sell planet saving to the rest of the world.

— stuart murdoch (@nee_massey) November 7, 2022

he is a bit of a melt, though he also lays into the tories sometimes in a way melts rarely do, on balance would say he's come out of the social media era better than most of his generation

There are quite strong arguments that all growth is bad and we need degrowth.

Though there are also quite strong arguments that green growth is possible and necessary.

I don't feel sure that Murdoch has really looked into the nuances of these detailed positions.

I think in his tweet what is more notable is the banality - as if no-one has ever talked about clean growth or green growth as a rhetorical approach before. I am quite an ignorant person, but even to me Murdoch can seem naive.

yeah his political philosophy is basically "well-meaning but ill-informed and lacking in insight" and I wish he would either learn about these things or shut up about them.

He was on QT recently and by all accounts didn't really say anything. odd he went on. also odd (imo) are people on twitter who follow 0 other people.

I agree with both those points. It is odd that he follows no-one.

He said very little on QT, made very little of the opportunity to talk in public - so why put himself through it? Was really hard to understand.

I won’t pretend I can unravel the entire lyrics to lazy line painter jane but I’m 100% sure that “running miles in some boys jumper” does not refer to having standing-up sex in the middle of the street while wearing the same shirt, that’s an extremely bizarre reading.

Yes, that would be wrong. I'm glad I didn't read that far.

"Don't bother with the soundtrack album, though."

Or the film itself. After reviews that were either merely polite or scathing (and the social-media critique of Murdoch for not including non-white characters), God Helps the Girl seems to have been rather forgotten even among B&S fans.

I like some aspects of the film, just can't stand the lead male actor.