*---* HAPPY BIRTHDAY SINISTER BABIES *---* is it wicked to make so many factual errors? probably. the tenor of the review is another story, i suppose. ~ ian -----> Belle and Sebastian THE BOY WITH THE ARAB STRAP | MATADOR BY CHRIS LEHMAN | "If You're Feeling Sinister," the de facto debut offering from Scottish Wunderkinder Belle and Sebastian, was a bracing but exhilarating primer in long-neglected pop fundamentals. Unassuming front man Stuart Murdoch delivered closely observed, sly and morose songs; the rest of the band supplied spare but hypnotically tuneful backing. It was the kind of seamless folk-inflected pop that the word "winsome" was invented to describe. Now, of course, the eminently justified critical embrace of "If You're Feeling Sinister" casts a long and almost certainly unfair shadow on the band's new disc, "The Boy With the Arab Strap." And just as understandably, the new disc finds the band in a restless, experimental mood. The short opening character study, "It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career," segues briskly into the insistent, synth-heavy rhythms of "Sleeping the Clock Around," only to lurch back to folkie introspection in a listless ode to clotted affect, "Is It Wicked Not to Care?" But it's also around here that the listener starts getting suspicious: The tag line of the song's outro chorus is "Would you love me till I'm dead?" a direct lift from the outro chorus of "Northern Sky," by the ethereal '70s folkie Nick Drake, one of Belle and Sebastian's most frequently cited musical ancestors. It seems that Murdoch and company are starting to tire of their own sense of youthful self-discovery and have set about indulging in the postmodern game of cataloging influences. Indeed, many of the new disc's songs seem like little more than involuted studies in pop allusion: The supremely ill-advised venture into Glaswegian trip-hop, "Spaceboy Dream," for example, sounds like a shotgun wedding between John Cale and A Tribe Called Quest. "Seymour Stein," a labored depiction of an uncool record company executive, sounds like Love's Arthur Lee on a particularly smug day. Even the more musically robust and interesting tracks, such as "The Roller Coaster Ride" and "Dirty Dream #2," don't stir themselves lyrically to address anything more than an assortment of ill-defined "troubles" and the band's own chronic sense of aimlessness. You certainly don't want to give up on a band as promising and as abundantly gifted as Belle and Sebastian. But too much of "The Boy With the Arab Strap" defies you to do just that. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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" +---+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+