I don't know how I feel about the new album. Not that I've heard it, I just mean how I feel about the prospect. I don't think I feel anything. I just think: there's an album coming out. I don't have it in me to be a fan any more. Of anything. I still have music that I love to listen to; Buck 65 makes me marvel, Busted make me grin, Camera Obscura make me smile and cry, Go Betweens make me warm and fuzzy, Beyonce makes me shake my booty, etc etc. And Belle & Sebastian still do some of the things they always do. But they don't creep into an empty space in my head and live there any more, because that space isn't there. Nobody else's words or lyrics fit my life perfectly now, because I've worked out my own words (less eloquent though they may be). I can still be moved by music but I can't be defined by it. I can't turn to Stuart Murdoch to solve a problem, but I don't really need to. There's a trend, in my life as well as in some of my friends', to shift away from the 'meaningful' music I loved as a teenager - Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins and REM, and yes, B&S - and towards frothy chart pop. I thought for a while that this was just because I've grown up and I'm not such a repellent little snob. But thinking about it, it's also because some 'meaningful' music is only meaningful when you haven't got a meaning of your own yet. Once life has solidified around you a bit, even 10 minutes of intense wailing and verbiage doesn't quite cover all the bases. Better to leap around to S Club 8 and mentally stave off impending death than pretend that Coldplay feel your pain. And that's why gigs and albums and DVDs by Belle & Sebastian are just gigs and albums and DVDs to me now. I feel like a traitor, but then again B&S have always been more than the sum of their indie parts, just by virtue of indirectly causing Sinister and all its seismic interpersonal happenings. By which I mean to say: I couldn't have met half the people that give my daily life its sparkle were it not for Belle & Sebastian. That's no mean feat. So of course I'll buy the album and shell out for a ticket to see them in Brighton - finally! - and follow their fortunes with extra fondness, even if I won't spend any more time musing on the track order and the new direction and the lyrical conundrums that I would for anyone else. Hope you're all well and ready to embrace autumn (or spring). New seasons seem either to bring very good or very bad things, but nothing ever stands still. I'm going to be a student again next week, which is doing all kinds of scary things to my sense of identity. Maybe I *will* return to angsty music after all... Oh, and Glasgow lot - I'm hitting your city in two weeks time. It's been far too long, and I can't wait :) love Archel xxx PS. I refuse to believe that Maddieminx isn't still reading on the quiet, so: yo! Maddie! check your email! PPS. Very very happy birthdays to Stacey dahling and Laura Llew, two of the presiding spirits of Sinister and both deserving of gifts and adulation to the max! PPPS. Extra hugs to Ken Chu. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the 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 +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+