Sinister: They're the tops! (well, we knew that already)

[Amanda Bergman]

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 at nwu.edu

"Play me a song to set me free."
--Belle and Sebastian


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