Sinister: TOTTYBUM Review

[David Moore]

Hi All,

Alex Tobin has posted a link to a review a couple of times, but as the
article is in German it has probably been of limited interest to most.
Translation follows - apologies for lack of smoothness, as I stopped
studying the language at the end of my last A Level paper .............. in
June 1973! 


belle and sebastian
the boy with the arab strap
jeepester/delabel/matador

perhaps there are only two records which remind you that lyrics can be more
than simply just lyrics. nick drake's five leaves left is one. the other is
the boy with the arab strap. that's it. autumn leaves. soap in the
plughole. hair that gets in your mouth when you kiss. that's just it.
however the musicians hide away from you. there are no interviews, (almost)
no press photos, above all there are no bits of information about belle and
sebastian. only stories. its established that they called themselves after
a french seventies children's TV programme and that the singer with the
soft falsetto, stuart murdoch, studies music in glasgow. his band is so
timid that there is genuine doubt as to whether they exist at all. after
all only 1,000 copies of their vinyl debut album tigermilk were pressed,
the rest being dubbed from tape to tape by fans. one of these cassettes
made it, perhaps in a scottish hiker's luggage, to a stereo in paris. where
it was heard by the french arm of virgin records, which produced the second
album, if you're feeling sinister. belle and sebastian might remind you of
the early housemartins, if they weren't so grim. you could compare them
with the tindersticks, if they weren't so rheumatic. and now, ladies and
gentlemen, the boy with the arab strap. songs so fleeting they'll probably
dissolve as soon as you turn your back on them. songs so intoxicating they
make tetrahydrocannabinol look like green tea. songs so complex that marcel
proust himself would have taken dark pleasure in them. delivered in an
enthrallingly commonplace voice that just captures the current mood exactly
and makes transparent all uncertainties with disarming clarity. a voice
with a wide-eyed, vulnerable, quite uncool naivete. even carefully arranged
elegies like seymour stein or the roller coaster ride sound as if they had
just this minute flowed from the pen of a drunken school band. perhaps
that's what belle and sebastian are, a pissed up school band, that dares to
let a warm froth of strings surge through the songs, to lay female
spoken-word sequences over a pounding 2/4 beat and to finally send the song
home on a euphoric cascade of bagpipes (dirty dream number two). and
despite fully possessed note-tracks (David needs help here!) the eight
musicians manage to simply echo stuart murdoch, murdoch with his acoustic
guitar in his hand. in the end its impossible to suppress the wide,
slightly silly grin that rears up as soon as you come into contact with
something truly magnificent. with naked beauty for example. with music that
isn't "soul", but which truly has a soul. with lyrics that move you to pick
up that old diary again, and if you never kept one, to start writing one
straight away. belle and her friend sebastian are artists who let you
forget that you weren't around when nick drake was. and the boy with the
arab strap is so good it makes you want to write the name of the band on
your forearm. in biro.

****** (six out of six)
arno frank
musikexpress 09.98

David Moore
Chelmsford, UK 
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