Darling Sinister, I'm aiming this straight for your heart, Ive been undercover, Rockin and Rollin up and down the midwest, and took note of the following... Last week when I was in Arkansas, several states south of my CDs, I was listening to a tape of TBWTAS and Sinister on my little headset. I had already turned out the lights and couldnt fall asleep because the house was just too damn quiet. I played both albums all the way through, and fell in love again, before the headphones got itchy and I took them off and fell asleep. Its been awhile since I was able to listen so intently, and I swear I kept hearing things Ive never noticed before. (Props to the ever-relevant Scott who I believe mentioned this audiophilic phenomenon in the context of Tigermilk a while back.) A year ago, when I began listening to B&S almost constantly, I was spending too much time in airports and on planes and couldnt hear the subtleties over the interference from engine noise and screaming children and people. Now I always take that tape on trips. Knowing all the words is somehow comforting. Contrary to the obvious, I dont find Seymour Stein to be the most appropriate song, instead Sleep the Clock Around, partially for the valium mention. I get so nervous about flying on planes that Im always wishing for in-flight sedatives. And here are those lovely people telling me to take one, yknow? And now for the point of this paragraph: I have yet to apply my late night headphone-listening as a litmus test to the new album. I wonder how the production quality (walls of sound?) will seem when heard that way. I like being able to hear fingertips sliding up and down a fretboard. Oooh. On my most recent flight from Dallas to Chicago, the public failed to remark upon my colourblind T-shirt. I perversely prefer this T-shirt to the rest of the batch because its hard to read, but nicely colored and designed. Plus since I go to an art school, people have never come up to me and said, Oh, Belle and Sebastian! They say, Oh, I do paintings like that! And then I smile and nod. Nick wrote: "But before everyone forms a lynch mob, we should see things from both sides now: 'Family Twee', you see, had its 'controversial' lyrics penned by Stuart himself. That's all I know." And then I said, Yikes! I must admit Im puzzled and even somewhat alarmed. Controversial, indeed. So I take it Stuart did not write the music for this? Ive been trying to imagine the lyrics sans Isobel and cannot make head nor tail of it. Im so confused--I mean thin--Im so thin! I also wish to join the crowd that wants The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner to be officially released, but I wonder if I would end up liking the live version kinda better, like I do in the case of Winter Wooskie. Speaking of which, I feel I can hardly comment on the new single. Ive been too busy fighting crime in disguise. And dancing the frug. With Mike Myers. But in between the demands of my international lifestyle of mystery, I wondered if Im the only one who misread Winter Wooskie as Winter Wookie and then pictured a shivering Chewbacca in a puffy coat. Of course this happened ages ago when I heard of the song before I actually heard it, so maybe someone else has already contributed this drippy bit of silliness.
From the U.S.A. with L.O.V.E.,
Agent Double Oh Sarah ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+