Hi All, Alex Tobin has posted a link to a review a couple of times, but as the article is in German it has probably been of limited interest to most. Translation follows - apologies for lack of smoothness, as I stopped studying the language at the end of my last A Level paper .............. in June 1973! belle and sebastian the boy with the arab strap jeepester/delabel/matador perhaps there are only two records which remind you that lyrics can be more than simply just lyrics. nick drake's five leaves left is one. the other is the boy with the arab strap. that's it. autumn leaves. soap in the plughole. hair that gets in your mouth when you kiss. that's just it. however the musicians hide away from you. there are no interviews, (almost) no press photos, above all there are no bits of information about belle and sebastian. only stories. its established that they called themselves after a french seventies children's TV programme and that the singer with the soft falsetto, stuart murdoch, studies music in glasgow. his band is so timid that there is genuine doubt as to whether they exist at all. after all only 1,000 copies of their vinyl debut album tigermilk were pressed, the rest being dubbed from tape to tape by fans. one of these cassettes made it, perhaps in a scottish hiker's luggage, to a stereo in paris. where it was heard by the french arm of virgin records, which produced the second album, if you're feeling sinister. belle and sebastian might remind you of the early housemartins, if they weren't so grim. you could compare them with the tindersticks, if they weren't so rheumatic. and now, ladies and gentlemen, the boy with the arab strap. songs so fleeting they'll probably dissolve as soon as you turn your back on them. songs so intoxicating they make tetrahydrocannabinol look like green tea. songs so complex that marcel proust himself would have taken dark pleasure in them. delivered in an enthrallingly commonplace voice that just captures the current mood exactly and makes transparent all uncertainties with disarming clarity. a voice with a wide-eyed, vulnerable, quite uncool naivete. even carefully arranged elegies like seymour stein or the roller coaster ride sound as if they had just this minute flowed from the pen of a drunken school band. perhaps that's what belle and sebastian are, a pissed up school band, that dares to let a warm froth of strings surge through the songs, to lay female spoken-word sequences over a pounding 2/4 beat and to finally send the song home on a euphoric cascade of bagpipes (dirty dream number two). and despite fully possessed note-tracks (David needs help here!) the eight musicians manage to simply echo stuart murdoch, murdoch with his acoustic guitar in his hand. in the end its impossible to suppress the wide, slightly silly grin that rears up as soon as you come into contact with something truly magnificent. with naked beauty for example. with music that isn't "soul", but which truly has a soul. with lyrics that move you to pick up that old diary again, and if you never kept one, to start writing one straight away. belle and her friend sebastian are artists who let you forget that you weren't around when nick drake was. and the boy with the arab strap is so good it makes you want to write the name of the band on your forearm. in biro. ****** (six out of six) arno frank musikexpress 09.98 David Moore Chelmsford, UK +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". For list archives and searching, list rules, FAQ, poor jokes etc, see http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +---+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" +---+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+