Hello all, Apologies if any of the below has already been posted. Scroll down if you do not want to read more admiration for B & S. Christopher _______________ Yet another shout of praise for B & S, this time from Mark Eitzel in the pages of Time Out New York (reviewing selected songs) :- TONY: 'Beautiful' by B & S "They're my favourite band right now. He's a great songwriter. I love his music. It's a beautiful song. I've listened to IYFS a million times" TONY: What do they remind you of ? "What is it - Velvet Underground's third record ? "Candy says" ? But I don't care; the guy writes really important lyrics." ______________ Also, Stephen Pastel on the Pastels homepage. (Anyone else see them in London ? Anyone going to see them in Europe ?) :- <underline>Stephen Pastel's Rebellious Jukebox </underline>[ This will appear in Melody Maker at some point, in the Rebellious Jukebox slot, but it will be in a much edited form. ] Calling it, Nailing it. Keenan/Pastel head-to-head. Stephen is in normal text, David @. At the ICA, London, lying on the floor. 1. Belle and Sebastian "3...6...9 Seconds Of Light"/ Beat Happening first LP Every so often things come along that make you really think about how you feel about things and a lot of the time music seems very controlled so Belle and Sebastian at this point in time seem very political. There's a lot of different reasons why I like them, I think there's a lot of personality in the music, it's very folksy and it's funny, it's intelligent but to me it's quite political. Certain things happen that make me so aware that something's important and the Belle and Sebastian record came out and, as I work in a record shop, we got this package in and it kinda had all this Creation stuff about how they were spending £50,000 on Hurricane #1 and simultaneous to this I got this song which I put on and it was like "you're stuffing your fat face" it seemed incredibly righteous. I got a similar buzz from that record as when I first heard Beat Happening, in a way Beat Happening really made me feel that The Pastels were almost vulgar in their complexity. (Both laugh uproariously) @ I know what you mean! I just wanted to get back to simpler values. @ To me what's interesting about Belle and Sebastian is that they're like another recurrence, an uprising, of what'' almost a Scottish archetype. There's an archetypal Scottish band that's come round again and on the one hand they've got a capacity, like The Pastels, for `everyday mythology' and there's something really down to earth Scottish about it, like the warmth of Gregory's Girl, the feel of those times. A school football pitch, in the evening in East Kilbride..y'know? On the other hand there's sophistication, they're real sharp and exciting, out for love and kicks... It's very conversational, it's like if you went to see a nouvelle vague film at the GFT, to listen to someone after it from Glasgow talking about it, in a way, is as illuminating as the film itself. Maybe that's what Belle and Sebastian are. @ That's totally it, that's totally it! They just seem so punk rock and uncompromising. So much of the music scene is really controlled by industry trends and Belle and Sebastian are really out with it. What you say about it being an archetype is partly true but it's got a real freshness also that all the best archetypes ever have. @ At the same time, the archetype is this almost total reinvention of the game again, y'know? It's archetype, it's not copyist. @ It's paradigm-shifting. It's a whole new paradigm. Again. Yeah, yeah, definitely. @ That's that one nailed. Absolutely. (Both laugh) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------