Pardon me if anyone else has already posted this, but I recently was skimming through Spin magazine and found that B&S's _If You're Feeling Sinister_ was named one of the year's top 20 albums according to the lovely folks there. Reading this praise of B&S would have been delightful in and of itself, but my discovery of the little blurb in the January issue was especially poignant because it provided an opportunity for me to prove to my sister, Meredith, that I am not crazy for liking B&S. She hates their music, and doesn't understand it can hold any sort of appeal for anyone. "Who likes this crap?" she asks. So it was really nice to have the CRITICAL ACCLAIM right there in print to rub in her face as we boarded the airplane from Flordia to New Jersey. And then I was reading her copy of Entertainment Weekly once we were airborne, and wouldn't you know it, there was more good press for B&S: they were rated one of the year's best up-and-coming artists (or something along those lines...the magazine advised readers to look for them in '98). So there, Meredith! In case anyone is interested, the complete Top 20 list is as follows: 20. Prodigy, The Fat of the Land 19. Wu-Tang Clan, Wu-Tang Forever 18. BELLE AND SEBASTIAN, IF YOU'RE FEELING SINISTER: and the critics rave, "Teensy, but never a toy, not half as frail as their willowy music seems, these Scots couple chaste songs to subtle perversions. 'Nobody writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me," sings group leader Stuart Murdoch, as these sad, swoony songs--nicking everything from Nick Drake to bossa nova to Merseybeat--illustrate keenly." 17. Geraldine Fibbers, Butch 16 Daft Punk, Homework 15. Janet Jackson, The Velvet Rope 14. Various Artists, Return of the DJ Vol. II 13. Roni Size/Reprazent, New Forms 12.Erykah Badu, Baduizm 11. Pavement, Brighten the Corners 10. The Chemical Brothers, Dig Your Own Hole 9. Missy Elliot, Supa Dupa Fly 8. Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One 7. The Notorious B.I.G., Life After Death 6. Portishead, Portishead 5. Bob Dylan, Time Out of Mind 4. Bjork, Homogenic 3. Sleater-Kinnet, Dig Me Out 2. Radiohead, OK Computer 1. Cornershop, When I was Born for the 7th Time Ah, it is so nice to be back at the old computer again. Over vacation I was technologically deprived. Though not B&S deprived, as I had my CDs with me. And I had a "near-gig" experience while we were in Disney World, at Epcot, the Saturday of the Manchester gigs. I saw a rock band playing, and they were all dressed in kilts and one was playing a bagpipe. "A Scottish band," I mused aloud. As close to a B&S show as I was going to get in Flordia. But then the lead singer opened his mouth to introduce the band, and as it turned out, they were not Scottish. Not even British. They were Canadian. That's when I realized I had left the perimeters of Epcot's "England" and had inadvertently wandered into "Canada." But anyway. I digress. Ta, Amanda ------------------------ Amanda Bergman Northwestern University a-bergman@nwu.edu "Play me a song to set me free." --Belle and Sebastian ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . 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? -----------------------------------------------------------------------