It's so bloody predictable... Look NME sent Seething Wells (ex-people's poet) to review B&S. That it is was a slap on the wrists for their naughty unco-operative behaviour goes without saying - they wheel him out, pathetically and patronisingly in love with his 4-real class consciousness, doing a job they're too gutless or witless to do themselves. I don't blame SW ... he was never going to understand, let alone like, Belle and Sebastian, eight middle class kids playing non-rock music, they occupy a completely different world. It's like sending me to review Pavarotti. Maybe Belle and Sebastian don't 'do' politics in the conventional sense of the word, well, why should they, it would be absurd - they write about what they know. SW makes a lot of people laugh with his sardonic prose, I understand. Not me, I don't intend to be 'grateful' for the fact that he's better than most of the other NME writers. So the review, yeah, it was funny ... but only in the way that Mr Abusing is funny. And Stephen Wells is serious. Steven Wells wrote:

Nicely jumpered skinny students suck feverishly on white-pack Silk Cut surrogate tits

Hey! Amateur psychology. Stephen is dead hard so he gets through twenty lighters a day.

and titter tweely at every feeble onstage witticism. Oh! It's all so oh-so coy and warm and happy-clappy cosy! This ever-so-slappable crowd of shit-eating indie-schmindie sheep

Look Mummy - I can swear.

"Integrity seems to be the key word," mumbles singer Stuart Murdoch (apropos absolutely f-ing nothing) to general laughter and a smattering of clapping. "Wanky, half-arsed, cackhanded and utterly insulting amateurism," would be closer to the f-ing mark (don't piss on me and tell me it's raining, twat).

More grown up swearing. Big boy!

And yet, despite the fact that Belle & Sebastian's sole trick is to combine piss-poor sub-Don McLean lyrics with nicked Kirsty MacColl riffs,

I like this, it's the sort of thing that gets indignant earnest fans writing in saying 'Were you even at the same gig as me?'

there is the merest whiff of real magic here. Even the most cynical folkophobic would find it hard not to twitch and shudder with near sexual pleasure at the throbbing muscle layered upon tracks like "The Stars Of Track And Field" and "The Fox In The Snow"

Awww ... see, he can see both sides. 'Fox in the snow' - throbbing? Were you even at the same gig as me?

(the recorded versions of which remain puke-inducingly whimsical and twee).

The t-word again.

But it's never enough to overcome the overwhelming stench of smug, cutesy-wutesy, mumsy-wumsy, Jack Straw-approved suburban shite.

Oh God, he's off...

Manchester Town Hall is an over-the-top, totally in-your-face and utterly awesome shrine to late-Victorian bourgeois triumphalism.

Oh dear, Northy won't like that bit.

Today it showcases a band who, more than any other, epitomise the tediously understated, wilfully inadequate and teeth-grindingly irritating school of aesthetically neutered and ideologically castrated middle-class, too-thick-for-art-school Blair Rock.

Personally I was much too clever for Art School.

A punter, seeing a hack scribble furiously, approaches and demands that NME doesn't compare Belle & Sebastian to "Felt, Nick Cave, The Smiths..." and a whole load of shit anti--rock bands because "that would be lazy".

Oh God, which idiot said that? Talk about red rag to a bull.

OK, how about The Carpenters without the camp? Burt Bacharach without the balls? Jonathan Richman without th jokes? Crowded House without the incisive lyrical insights?

That's a joke, right?

Or maybe The Velvet Underground without the tunes, looks, attitude, politics, style, asthetics, vision, talent, charisma, sunglasses, black turtle-neck sweaters or f-ing drugs?

Clever stuff. Especially the 'f-ing drugs'.

That do you? I mean, you seem so easily pleased.

Well, I can't tell you how sorry I am for being middle-class and university educated, not to mention breast fed. Thank God, I didn't go to public school. Tag ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . 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? -----------------------------------------------------------------------