Dear Sinister, Ah, well I've been meaning to post for over a week now, but it's been a chaotic time in the life of me. I wanted to make some observations on how B&S have affected my life, but I also want to say something about the new album. So I'll do them both, in reverse order. So if you're the kind who like reading how people think of the album, read the first part and then delete. If you like reading about people's lives only, skip on down a bit. Oh but first I was listening to a mixtape from a friend, and I realized, upon hearing a certain Velvet Underground song, that it sounded a LOT like Legal Man. Not the chords necessarily, but the bongos, the whimsy and the faux-soulness of the song. I can't remember the name of the song, though, as it's not on any of the first three albums, and that's all I've got. It's the one where Lou says "Electricity is from other planets," and the one where they're talking in the sound booth the whole time. Anyway, on to the album... The way I got to hearing FISHYCLAP is, I think, the absolute most perfect way to hear a new album by your favorite band (or one of your favorite bands). Firstly, I started to hear it wasn't good at all, and I heard a couple of good songs on Napster but I refused to listen to any more of the album until it came out properly. Then I heard it was a grower, more thoughts on the album. Then the day it came out I drove to the only independent record store here in Charleston, West Virginia (anyone else live here? Didn't think so...) and of course, Belle & Sebastian might as well have been something in another language, so I moved on to the Mall, and actually found several copies there in a chain store, priced, of course, at $18. But I bought it anyway. Then I took it home and listened to it a few times each day and have been doing so for a while, each time in its entirety. I'll say this, there's a tendency to be disappointed with bands you love, and that's why hearing it wasn't good helped me realize it was great. It easily surpassed my worried expectations. And it is a fantastic album. I'm not sure if it's better or worse than previous B&S albums, but it's fantastic. And if a lot of people don't think so and their fanbase drops then fine, that never stopped me from liking them before. As to the album as a whole, I think it's very organic, and I have no idea what people who don't think so are talking about. The production and instrumentation tie the disparate styles of songs together quite nicely, and that's the definition of the best thing to do on an album. If you write songs that all sound the same, then that's even worse, because it starts to get boring no matter how good the songs are on their own. If you just simply write different song styles without tying them together, you end up with something like Tigermilk, some excellent songs, some boring ones, and absolutely nothing to tie them all together. For the record, Tigermilk's my least favorite B&S album and from the sound of things it'll stay that way. And even if this isn't my favorite B&S album (which I haven't properly decided but it's doubtful this could best Sinister), it's certainly got some of the best Belle & Sebastian songs to date on it. The Model, for example, is astonishingly good, from the very first bit where I could swear it was going to be a Left Banke song, to Struan and Stevie trading lines like nobody's business. Mmm, and the harpsichord, yet another innovation which I think ties this album together, as it's featured on three or four songs prominently. Don't Leave the Lights on Baby is another fantastic Struan song, and I Fought in a War is lovely as well. All three of these could fit on my 'best of' B&S list. And then there's "Waiting for the Moon to Rise," which blew my mind the first time I heard it. I think Sarah is the only B&S member whose voice holds a candle to Struan's. More Sarah! Less Isobel! Sarah should sing all the backing vocals from here on in if you ask me. I never thought a song not written by Stuart M would be one of my favorites off of an album, but it is. The Wrong Girl is quite good as well, I think. Stevie's best song by far, although the strings do sound a bit iffy on it. It already grew on me since I heard the session of it, so it doesn't need repeat listenings. It actually sounds a little less country on the album. Nice Day for a Sulk is a guilty pleasure. A self-parody, but how'd they manage to make it sound so good to listen to? I'll never understand that. And Woman's Realm is very nice as well, even though it does sound a bit like a lesser Arab Strap, it's distinct and I think it stands on its own. There's Too Much Love, again, falls into the category for me of very good B&S songs on this album. So that leaves...Chalet Lines, Family Tree and Beyond the Sunrise. Two of which are the most 'controversial' songs on this album. Chalet Lines, I think, is a bit painful to listen to sometimes, but sounds good and varies the formula of the album nicely. So I'm glad it's there but in its own right I wouldn't put much value in it. I feel the same about Beyond the Sunrise, actually. As a single it would be awful, but it makes a great atmospheric album track, insuring that the album isn't too formulaic. And once you get past the first couple of verses, you get those haunting Struan and Isobel vocal harmonies with that eerie bell in the background. That's worth the track alone. The only song I'm not happy with at all is Family Tree. Who said this was penned by Stuart M? If it is he must be trying to write songs for Isobel's Gentle Waves album, as that's all it sounds like. "The Gate" is a lovely song, and it has enough B&S in it to justify it being a B&S song. But this...doesn't even sound like B&S. It's frighteningly twee, and not in the self-parody style of Nice Day for a Sulk. I'd have switched this song for Winter Wooskie if I could have chosen the tracklisting. But that's one thing I think some people haven't considered here. As much as I adore Loneliness of the Middle Distance Runner, sticking that twangy monster in the middle of this album would have made it incredibly inorganic. It doesn't match up well with most of the songs, whereas most of these other ones do in their own way, even Family Tree. Another thing to consider, all of Stuart's songs on this album save I Fought in a War seem to have been written on a piano. What I mean by that is that B&S usually seem to write songs by having someone, often Struan, write a part on an instrument and vocals, and then bring it in and the group comes up with the rest. Or at least that's how Isobel described it in her Chickfactor interview. And Stuart's guitar songs usually seem to end up being more traditional band-type songs with traditional band-type instrumentation. The piano songs seem to be the ones the band gets a bit more creative on. Oh, and the efforts by non-Struan members actually seem to me to fit much better (and sound much better) on this album too. They don't stick out like sore thumbs anymore. And another thing I noticed. The use of guitar is played down a lot on this album. There are a lot of points where you can hardly hear any guitar. When it is used, the effect is wonderful, like the Byrds-y guitar bits in Waiting for the Moon to Rise, and the first shimmering electric guitar in I Fought in a War, which now that I think on it does sound a little like Love. Not as much as Expectations though ;) So they played down guitars in favor of pianos and harpsichords and organs, and when the guitars are there, their presence is all that much more appreciated in my mind. That's one of the other things that makes me feel the album is more coherent and organic. Certainly moreso than TWATTYBUS and Tigermilk. I think I'll never like it as much as Sinister but it's not going to be my least favorite B&S album, and it's excellent. That's what I think anyway. So on to the bit about my life that is only somewhat related to B&S. I made a tape of my favorite B&S songs back when Modern Rock Song came out. And one day about a week ago I took a bike ride, and that was the tape I brought with me. My life has been very chaotic lately, and I'm about to graduate. The ending in the subject header is my life as a student, and living in the town I went to school for the larger part of four years. Not that I really loved that town or being a student, it's just that endings always bother me. The finality of them. But anyway, I took my 90-minute tape with me, and I rode my bike down the path next to the Hocking River. The path goes by the Hocking for a ways, meanders along with it, then eventually crosses through a park and into a forest. I remember dodging butterflies and smelling the forest plants and the damp mud of the creeks. It's a really pretty ride, one of the things I'll miss about Athens. I didn't think about how far I'd go, I just popped the tape in, and rode until side one was over. Then I turned around and put side two in. I certainly went a lot further than I'd ever gone before. But I realized some things in those 90 minutes. One thing was that Belle & Sebastian have been a massive part of my life as a university student. I first heard them as a freshman, and now I'm graduating. I didn't even like them at first, but I remember a day when I went to do my radio show, and feeling like I wanted to transfer, hating the place I was at, and so I just went in and instead of doing my show, I listened to Sinister, which had just been put in the studio and just been released. And listening to it the first time in its entirety was like a revelation. "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying," seemed to echo my heart at the time perfectly. I bought Sinister the next day, and I never looked back. Listening to them brought so many memories back to me. Like how much my best friend likes Dirty Dream Number Two. That song will always remind me of her. And I was reminded of seeing them the first time with her, and how magical it was. I don't think I've ever seen any of my other favorite bands before, and some of them I never will (unless John Lennon turns up alive, for example), but it's a fantastic experience, and they were in top form when we saw them. Nothing will ever beat that sensation in my mind. Part of it from seeing one of my favorite bands, whose songs I've all but memorized, and part of it seeing that with someone special to me, who felt the same way. I remember once, I had listened to the same tape and almost posted to the list about the experience I had with it. I was to pick up a friend from the airport in Columbus, and my car's battery had died. I called a towing service to come jump it, but they nearly missed me, and I had to run out waving my arms, and I slipped and fell on one of the many patches of ice then in my desperation. But I got ahold of them and I took off, speeding towards Columbus so my friend wouldn't have to wait in the airport any longer than neccessary. And as B&S played I travelled too fast over ice and snow, worried I'd spin out or my car would collapse. Several banging noises happened, but nothing severe enough to cause me problems. As it turns out the car had more than battery problems, and though it seemed fine when I picked my friend up, it later broke down in Columbus, and we were stuck in the cold for a long time, until a preacher drove me to get a new battery. Anyway, although I was listening to B&S at the time, I never did post about it, because for a while I was too busy entertaining my friend, and then I decided it didn't have much to do with the band or the music. But this bikeride did. I feel like B&S are a part of me. And as I unsteadily open a new chapter in my life, it's reassuring to know that a new Belle & Sebastian album is here with me, to help get me through the tough times and to etch the good times in my memory. This album does seem a bit more like a tough times kind of album, though, truthfully. So I hope that doesn't bode ill for me. I think Nick Hornby said, probably in High Fidelity, something to the effect that songs never let you down. Your life can let you down, people and material things can let you down, but songs never do. That seems as good a place as any to stop. -- Brian Pennington, aka Mick McMick | cellophanesky@mac.com | ICQ# 39021436 Sandcastle Records: <http://www.indiepages.com/sandcastle/> "Better a tear of truth than smiling lies." - Duncan Browne +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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. 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