Hello Sinister Hello…? Sinister…? Oh well. I'll assume you can hear me, until I receive news to the contrary. I woke up this morning, Sinister, with The Model in my head. The song, that is, by Belle & Sebastian. Out of nowhere. While listening to Nick Clegg and to Will Self and to Justin Webb on the Today Programme, while eating my breakfast and cleaning my teeth, lines of the song kept popping into my mind: "Judy learnt a lot from putting on blindfold", "Because I have been sleeping badly lately", "It's days and months before I'll see you again" – not lines of any significance, by any stretch, but who can really fathom what our subconscious chooses to send upstairs? I mustn't have listened to that song – deliberately, at least – for maybe 5 years. Not through aversion, you understand, more through displacement. So with a 40-minute walk to work ahead of me, I decided to put on FISHYCLAP and see how it grabbed me, a decade since its release. I think YOU should too – it's not a great album, but it's interesting, if you are (or were) a fan of the band. I must admit, Sinister, that after all these years, I actually really enjoyed The Clunker. Sure, it feels a bit spaghetti Western, a bit like a fancy dress party, but there's a swing in its step that pulls it through any accusations of insincerity. I Fought In A War is still a very elegant piece of songwriting. The Model is as good as I remembered it (that is, very). Other tracks made me smile too. I still can't enjoy The Chalet Lines though, and Nice Day For A Sulk is an awful song. And it amazed me, as I paced down Liverpool Road, avoiding the patches of melting muddied snow, that ten years ago it was acceptable to put a song as terrible as Family Tree onto a commercially released album – and that was when people were still paying money for albums. It also struck me, as I listened, that in a couple of weeks it'll be ten years since I joined Sininster. Ten years since I was in Upper Sixth and pestering my folks to "get the internet". I went for a nostalgic rummage around the archives just now to remember how wonderful it all was – and once again, I think YOU should too. I listened to Belle & Sebastian today, deliberately, for the first time in ages. I'm not sure why that happened today, but I'll listen to some more, soon. x ================================ "He's strictly a pain in the ass, but he certainly has a good vocabulary" - Holden Caulfield +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the 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 +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+