Search And Destroy: Belle And Sebastian

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.

HI DERE!

She runs alot in the short story in the liner notes to the single:

https://i.discogs.com/_xfZOalsljXGpxrmJ1X9on6etnGgK5d98SAGx09jypo/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTM2ODk2/NS0xMjg4Njk4MTk1/LmpwZWc.jpeg

Forgot to note that I saw a Belle and Sebastian Illustrated Lyrics book on a table at the front of The Strand yesterday.

Alice and I watched "God help the girl", and liked it a lot

It helped that Alice was basically on the way to 'modern music uni' at the time, so it was pretty much what she was doing right then!

The wife and I both enjoyed the movie and the albums. After that is when I stopped paying them much attention.

How many B&S songs mention Lisa, I wonder.

Y'all made my curious about QT, which I'd not seen before. That episode is on Youtube. A more generous assessment might be that the moderator didn't give Murdoch all that many opportunities?

ok, i literally could not understand the first questioner's question. at second listen i caught "liz truss," "common market," and "too far." skeered, yup, but i'll try.

Come off better than most of his generation on social media? Perhaps - to his credit, he hasn't gone down the TERF route like certain Glasgow indie popsters - but his meltdown over the P4K article about systemic racism in indie was a pure riddy. In fairness, I think there's been some reflection on this. I think naivety is the word.

https://athousandflowers.net/2015/03/30/weekly-wanker-049-stuart-murdoch/

I’m sorry to have my attention drawn to Murdoch’s Twitter feed. It’s put me off him a bit, honestly. This thread is Adrian Chiles-level discourse.

It makes me think that fundamentally the banks aren’t so bad after all. They keep our money for us, but they look upon it like a loan, and they pay us interest. Just like when they lend us money to buy a house, but they charge us interest. It’s the same rules.😎

— stuart murdoch (@nee_massey) November 5, 2022

She runs a lot in the short story in the liner notes to the single

The liner notes on Belle and Sebastian releases put me off listening to them for ages. This reminds me why.

I met someone who was working for the band on their cruise who referred to the film as 'God Help Us All'

Haha, I had to give up on the film. Just so badly conceived and executed, and its twee bohemian fantasy Glasgow with no working class or POC in it (apart from the brief appearance of some drug dealing "hooligans") is ghastly. A pal who went to a screening of a rough cut said there was a scene where the lead makes a comment about neds and cockroaches being the only things to survive the apocalypse. Thankfully somebody had a word and it was cut...

yeah the reaction to the pitchfork article was bad, though to be fair he did reflect on it a bit at least and did seem to learn something. his melty "let's be reasonable" stuff has me rolling my eyes, and is why I muted him a while back.

I would put musicians on social media into four camps:

* Never post or only post about new releases, etc. (this is 50%+ and is probably the best option)
* Post reasonable moderate centrist both-sides stuff which is frustratingly nieve, ill-informed and completely maladaptive to an environment like Twitter (Stew and quite a lot of others fit in here, maybe 20%)
* Understand the discourse, are politically sound and know that Twitter is for shitposting and dunking (You can count these people on your fingers, they are so few)
* Have disappeared down a rabbit hole of TERFism, antivaxxers, covidiots, MAGAs, freeze peach, etc. most likely sparked by someone daring to disagree with them once (this is unfortunately something like 20% too)

So all I would say is, better in group 2 than group 4.

Perhaps - to his credit, he hasn't gone down the TERF route like certain Glasgow indie popsters

Naming names is a must here.

Albini is my favorite twitter music person.

Alan from Low is very good as well.

Just so badly conceived and executed, and its twee bohemian fantasy Glasgow with no working class or POC in it

... or Glaswegians.

the band on their cruise

Francis MacDonald from TFC has shared plenty of GC stuff, although he's been quieter on that front of late. He's the most prominent, but others have dabbled, defended their TERFy pals, or made winding up woke lefties part of their tired contrarian schtick. I've also seen people radicalised by some nasty arts/media TERFS. Pretty clear this nonsense is one of the reasons Katrina from the Pastels set up a trans solidarity campaign.

There's a lot of privileged 90s liberalism going round the old Glasgow indie scene. As a result this stuff gets a free pass, as if it's just an "opinion", or people don't say anything cos they don't want to upset the applecart. It's depressing to see the likes of Norman Blake and Mogwai working with or remixing the atrocious Fat Cops - surely they can't be unaware of McColm and Deerin's numerous transphobic columns and tweets, or the fact their keyboard player is married to JKR.

So with all that in mind, good on Murdoch for endorsing Graham Norton's "accountability" comments and saying nice things about Eddie Izzard.

*helped set up* that should say.

Bunch of smug self-satisfied cliquey cunts anyway, always have been

the atrocious Fat Cops

i had never heard of them. had a listen. atrocious seems too kind.

Just checked them out, full agreement. Articles say it's Al Murray the comedian singing, but it's surely another Al Murray.

As if one Al Murray isn't bad enough.

To me Al Murray is Al Molinaro who played Murray the Cop on The Odd Couple and owned Al's Diner on Happy Days.

Ha, atrocious is indeed too kind.

Al Murray the Pub Landlord (for non-UK readers, a shit one joke comedian) is indeed in the band. Don't think he's the singer though, although he may well sing some of their numbers from behind the drum kit. The frontman is Chris Deerin, the New Statesman's clueless Scotland editor. Two sneering centre-right hacks, a crap comedian, a Glasgow indie veteran and JK Rowling's husband: the house band of the worst bits of British Twitter. Their only fans appear to be JK Rowling and (UK media failson) Alex Massie. They're on Last Night From Glasgow, who mostly sell fancy vinyl reissues of 90s Glasgow indie to Bearsden dads. It's widely speculated that at least one of the band is behind misogynist Twitter account Brian Spanner, who has now reinvented himself as a gender critical champion of women having deleted all his posts calling a female politicians "torn faced c*nt"

Worst band line up ever?