Sinister: you want a review??

[duke of harringay]

well i toiled and i troubled and i... well you
really don't want to know what else i did.  but i
did finish my 'review' of 3,6,9 Seconds of Light.
It's pasted in it's entirety below, but i really
do urge you to go look at it in it's pretty
splendour (okay so  swiped some of Davids
images... sue me) on the tangents web site.  just
follow the link kids!

sunday nights... listening to the Crabs again.
yum.

the duke

PS please david, don't sue me... i have no money.
just a sticking big cold :-(

--
Tangents On-Line
http://www.virtual-pc.com/tangent/
Tangents On-Paper: PO Box 102, Exeter, EX2 4YL, UK

tangent at mail.zynet.co.uk


-------the review! ---------

[the introduction]

So Claire comes around to say hello.  I go ‘hey, I
have a present for you’, and I give her a Belle &
Sebastian badge.  She goes, ‘thanks, that’s really
cool’.  She tells me she’s been playing the tape I
gave her, tells me it’s different. She qualifies
this with ‘good different’.  And then smiles.

I tell her about Union Chapel and about Jarvis.  I
tell her that Lazy Line Painter Jane missed the
charts by 172 sales.  At this she’s amazed.  She
goes, ‘Belle & Sebastian aren’t a chart band’, and
I tell her what Isobel said about her favourite
bands never getting in the charts.  Claire smiles
as is to say ‘see?’ and then goes, ‘and if they do
get in the charts and into Smash Hits, then you’ll
not like them as much, will you?  They’ll not mean
as much to you when they’re successful.’

I smile, and say nothing, because it’s good to
know that me and Pop can be so transparent.  I
just go, ‘you want to hear the next single?’
Claire goes, ‘oh go on then.’

The tape plays ‘Century of Fakers’.  Ever the
observant type, Claire spots that it’s the same
tune as ‘Century of Elvis’.  She says she prefers
Elvis because it’s a lovely story and besides it
made people ask if Elvis was a cat, a dog or
indeed a piece of broccoli.  We go for the
broccoli.  I say ‘I think Elvis is great because
it’s a transitory, essentially Pop, essentially
throwaway’.  I say, ‘here’s what I wrote about it
all the other day’.  Claire starts reading.  She
reads:

[the theory]

I think ‘Century of  Fakers’ is a great song and I
can’t stop it from going around in my head, but
maybe that’s because I’ve been listening to it for
ages already.  The melody enhances the backing
track, which still reminds me of the Sabres’
sublime ‘Smokebelch’ perfectly, and as ever Mr
Murdoch intones his intelligent lyrics in a voice
that is fleet of foot and light of touch.  It’s
almost apologetically scornful, a way of making
social and political commentary seductive,
refusing to express anger or distrust in boringly
obvious and traditional ways.  In this, he sings
in a style that could be likened to Malcolm Eden
in the great lost ‘80s group McCarthy, a fact not
unlinked to the next tune


The marvellously titled ‘Le Pastie De La
Bourgeoisie’ (translates as ‘apathy of the middle
classes’ apparently) echoes McCarthy’s own great
‘We Are All Bourgeois Now’ in title, and in
sentiment it rather brings to mind the feelings
behind their ‘The Well Fed Point Of View’, wherein
the ‘poetic’ concept of finding salvation and
freedom from oppression lying within the ‘soul’ is
openly and vitriolically attacked.  I feel that
Belle & Sebastian are launching a similar assault,
albeit in a much more elliptical manner.  I can’t
help feel that the knowing references to such
obvious ‘yoof cultural’ icons as ‘Catcher In The
Rye’ and Kerouac / ‘On The Road’ are intentionally
placed to be mocking of this feeling that the
middle classes can escape some sense of moral and
spiritual responsibility by taking these routes of
escape with the excuse of ‘finding yourself’.
There is a sense that here is a resentment at
being made impotent by upbringing and sociological
education.  But then that escape from the everyday
into fantasy is the traditional purpose of Pop of
course, and Belle & Sebastian are as trapped as
McCarthy were within it’s contradictions, although
perhaps they are slightly more willing to embrace
those contradictions and make them work for them.
Or maybe they are just blessed or cursed to be
living in this Post-ideological age where Politics
have dissolved to the state of perfume.  Perhaps.
Certainly they are as obsessed with the concept of
great Pop, and ‘Le Pastie’ rollocks along with
typically chipper keyboards and a surf guitar that
is pure Beat Poets.  Sonically, it all sounds a
bit mad, a bit like it could all collapse at any
moment and as such of course it is an exhilarating
delight.

Speaking of collapse (hey, don’t you love these
connections!), track three, the delirious
‘Beautiful’ seems to be rotating around the idea
of collapse.  The collapse of received visual
expectation, wherein the object of Popular Desire
is seen to be ‘beautiful, only slightly mental’,
and that if we only knew what was going on in her
life, ‘there would be a documentary on Radio 4.’
The collapse of shuffling jazzy brushed drums into
a spiralling crescendo of mournful trumpet and
brittle guitar pirouettes.  It’s a strange song
that stays inside you for hours.  A song for
mildly psychedelic funeral services.

‘Put The Book Back On The Shelf’ is another song
I’ve been playing and adoring for several months,
and with it’s glorious opening and trumpet refrain
it’s going to be easy to see why.  It’s another of
the songs that features the semi-mythic Sebastian
character, and as such continues the theme of
self-questioning doubt and pity that previous
songs in the series have brought to the fore (the
eponymous track on the Dog On Wheels EP being the
most obvious example).  There’s the essence of
deliberate withdrawal from the world here, a
feeling which is prevalent in the whole Belle &
Sebastian story, the very essence which is
reflected upon with scorn in ‘Le Pastie’.  And
it’s these open peculiarities, this struggling to
come to terms with personal status within society
which Belle & Sebastian seem to me to so
successfully embody.

The sleeve tells you that this is the end of the
record, but instead there’s a short pause before
the final, un-listed track ‘Songs For Children’
fades in.  With it’s nod to the Pastels and the
independent scene of the 1980s that Stuart at
least was part of (if you doubted go read the
sleevenotes here with the reference to bowl cuts
and Postcard cats), it’s an odd but fitting
adjunct to the record, with it’s simple insistent
repetition of ‘Belle & Sebastian, on the radio,
playing Songs For Children’, and although the
apologetic ending almost grates, there’s still the
feeling that they aren’t really sorry at all.
Certainly one hopes so.  It all sounds like the
early Ben Watt records, or Blueboy in their
acoustic and most fragile of moments.  Pretty much
insubstantial but all the more lovely for it.

So, five songs, the quality and depth of which you
will struggle to find anywhere else in the ruins
of Pop this year.  Certainly as an antithesis to
the brickie rock of Oasis, it’s way out paving the
way for the new generation of lost but happy
shambling poets and songwriters who have the souls
of tender perverts.  When you see them on Top Of
The Pops you’ll know the revolution is under way,
and they as you will know all about the
(ir)relevance of it all.  They’ll be down the
front penning pictures of the hangings.


[the conclusion]

So Claire puts this paper down and goes ‘yeah yeah
yeah.’  She nods at me and the tape recorder.
‘You forgot one thing’ she says.  I go ‘what’s
that then?’ and as she jumps off the desk,  whips
the tape from the recorder and legs it out the
door I hear her shout ‘THEY SOUND FUCKING GREAT!!’



------- the end -------



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