I was parusing this site for an article about another musician when I came upon these two things for Belle and Sebastian. Thought I would share them with you all... http://www.theavclub.com/bonusfeature1.html the lists are of the best albums of 1999. its on toward the bottom so you'll have to scroll down, I think these lists were made by writers for the onion. And these two reviews were written some time ago. How long? I'm not sure, i dunno if anyone even cares but I figured perhaps you would. well take care ciao iris i am drunk with gravity Belle & Sebastian The Boy With the Arab Strap (Matador) The Glasgow-based musical cooperative Belle & Sebastian's out-of-nowhere American debut If You're Feeling Sinister was one of last year's most striking albums. The tightly structured, but never predictable, pop and the literate, fey lyrics of singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch combined to create a sound that prompted thoughts along the lines of, "Oh, so that's what's been missing." "No one writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me," Murdoch sang on "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying," and it sounded like a mission statement; sunny-sounding British pop and sensitive alienation hadn't gone so tightly hand-in-glove since The Smiths, a comparison from which the group, however disingenuously, shies away. Sinister was followed by a series of exciting Eps (Lazy Line Painter Jane, Dog On Wheels, and 3...6...9 Seconds Of Light) that sometimes echoed that album and sometimes didn't, expanding B&S's sound in ways that worked more often than not. For every song that didn't quite connect, there were two that connected brilliantly, indicating that the eight (and sometimes more) band members weren't content to repeat a winning formula. The follow-up to Sinister, The Boy With The Arab Strap, is in the vein of those Eps. Boy offers up pleasures less immediate than Sinister, but they're ultimately just as substantial. "It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career," the title track, and "A Summer Wasting" have a familiar, acoustic-dominated sound. But then there's the antiquated electronic noises heard on "Sleep The Clock Around" and "Is It Wicked Not To Care," which hands the vocals over to a female member (the typically cryptic liner notes don't indicate a name). While it might be a better album without the spoken-word "A Space Boy Dream" and the uncharacteristically terse "Chickfactor," it's possible to see their inclusion as a good thing. (The same can't be said, of course, for the occasional moments that sing the pains-of-being-a-rock-star blues. Nobody, except possibly other rock stars, cares.) While not a pristine instant classic like its predecessor, The Boy With The Arab Strap announces that Belle & Sebastian is in it for the long haul, and seemingly committed to not standing still. As long as it keeps turning out material as lovely as the album-closing "The Rollercoaster Ride," that's a wonderful thing. --Keith Phipps Belle And Sebastian Tigermilk (Jeepster/Matador) Maybe it's no coincidence that one of the most exciting, least conventional bands to emerge in the latter half of the '90s also had one of the least conventional starts. Picked up as the project of a university marketing class, the ever-expanding Scottish band Belle And Sebastian unexpectedly achieved stardom on a small scale with its first album, Tigermilk. Expanding its audience in both Europe and the U.S. with the masterful If You're Feeling Sinister, the group proved that the world, or at least an enthusiastic cult, was ready for sensitive teen music for grownups: ornately crafted melodies accompanied by lyrics that were clever without being cute and dominated by a personality that was sensitive and retiring without being mopey. In the wake of this success, Tigermilk, originally limited to 1,000 copies, took on a nearly legendary quality, becoming widely bootlegged and even more widely sought after. Wisely, it's now been reissued legitimately, and it almost lives up to its reputation. The album-opening "The State I Am In" could sound a bit more impressive, but only because B&S cut a better version of it on an EP, and it's hard to imagine the band outdoing the versions of the two songs that follow. "Expectations" and "She's Losing It" more than live up to high standards set by the group's later work, displaying the ability to incorporate a small orchestra's worth of instruments into economical pop melodies while staking out unique lyrical territory. (For example: "Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange / Making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay.") That's true of most of Tigermilk. The faux-electronica of "Electronic Renaissance" lends the album one of its few head-scratching moments, while "I Don't Love Anyone" finds chief songwriter Stuart Murdoch still struggling to find his voice, but nothing gets in the way of making Tigermilk an essential album for both Belle And Sebastian fans and virtually everyone else. --Keith Phipps +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@missprint.org". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@missprint.org". WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+