Lawrence Mikkelsen wrote from his lonely pit of Kiwi gloom:

It's not like there wouldn't been any new material. There are *loads* of brilliant songs which haven't been released. Lord Antony, Rhoda, The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner, plus the myriad of songs which were (supposedly) recorded during the "Peasant" sessions and have never seen the light of day.

So really, I don't think a new album would be too difficult to hastily compile.

Somehow the idea of Belle & Sebastian 'hastily compiling' an album of stuff left in the can doesn't seem terribly likely. If you want this to happen, I suggest you engineer some kind of horrible accident for them all so that Cheapster can do a Jeff Buckley on them. Perhaps Isobel's headscarf could get caught in the wheels of her Fiat Punto and Stuart could drown in a pool of his own semen. Does anyone else have any death fantasy scenarios they'd like to share? Youn sighed:

So Stuart was 27 years old when it happened for him.  Now I'm two years overdue.

What happened for him? Things are happening for me all the time. If you mean hitting it big with a band then I guess they're aren't, though. But let's not go down that road. We're all failures unless we start looking at novelists' start dates rather than those of p(P)op s(S)tars. If you aren't religious, then there are only five important things in life: 1) absence of illness (mental and physical) 2) well-being of family, friends and (if you're really nice) the world at large 3) being sexually attractive 4) intellectual or artistic achievement, which, if appreciated by a wide audience may take the place of: 5) procreation As far as I see it, career success is only a means to achieving points (2) and, importantly (3). Sorry, I don't know where that bout of banal delineation came from. Your vintage fridge sounds much better than all the crappy ones that I've had in my life, Youn. Defrosting them via the means of turning off the power takes hours and then all the stuff in the freezer compartment goes soggy and I feel obliged to throw out the hash brown that I'd discovered encased in ice. So I am forced to device ways of speeding up the process. A bowl of hot water helps things a little, but I can't help resorting to more direct measures. A carving knife is the perenially-tempting implement, but a few years ago I pierced the coolant tube and so now I exercise caution in this regard. For a while I used a hair dryer, but then it blew up and never got round to replacing it. Then inspiration struck. I was pondering the appeal of the hot knife, but tired of the constant reheating requirements and mindful of the aforementioned puncturing debacle I suddenly thought 'Iron!'. So now I use that and it works a treat. You have to be a bit careful not to mistake fridge walls for ice, and it's not possible to reach all corners if your freezer compartment is small. It would be better with a mini travel-iron. I imagine American fridges are much better than ours. When I was in New York I was really impressed by the huge one in my sister's cousin's apartment and its ice dispensing mechanism. Apparently they're quite commonplace over there. I don't think this is another tea/coffee cultural myth. Photojenni27@aol.com posted and I shook my head at the thought that there are so many Photojennys at aol.com that 26 people have already resorted to an alternative spelling. God, being a Belle & Sebastian fan is boring these days. Perhaps they'll release another record, perhaps they won't. But if they do, you can guarantee that half of us will say something along the lines of 'well it might not be my favourite album of theirs, but it's still better than anything else around'. This is a sure sign that we've become REM fans. Or is it? Thoughts on the importance of self-awareness and sensitivity to the march of progress in pop music are welcome. N. xx +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+