Sinister: valley advocate TBWTAS review

[kerry lannert]

the valley advocate here in western mass has a review of twattybus in
this week's issue.
here it is (please pardon my typing errors):

Cry With These Words: belle and sebastian will break your heart if
given the chance
by joshua westlund

	belle and sebastain are glasgow's masters of inconcspicuous chic --
that unassuming, delicate, obsessively self-conscious, white
middle-class indie rock art of looking cool whie trying not to look
like you're trying to look cool. their songs all sound the same,
regretlessly, even gleefully: cheery major chords (strummed ever so
gently) lope about, breezy moogs gurlge and chirp, bagpipes hum
majestic melodies, and other obscure, barely audible instruments
meander as they please, adding slight minimal flourishes over main
singer/songwriter sturat murdoch's creamy croon. it's ever so
pastoral, chip[per and catchy -- "good vibrations" set in scotland's
vibrant, verdant highlands.
	since releasing their debut, tigermilk, belle and sebastian hve
become avatars of indie rock's most hallowed tradition: playing hard
to get. tigermilk was limited to 500 vinyl copies, and the band has
since released several other similarly obsucre EPs and singles --
prompting fans to hoard, obsess and spend exorbitant amounts of cash
(an original copy of tigermilk recently sold for about $1,000 at an
auction). and belle and sebastian not only demand devotion from their
fans, they're also smugly self-awre of their talkent that they can't
help but point it out in their songs while winking and smirking about
their deliberate marginality.
	"nobody writes them like they used to -- so it may as well be me,"
murdoch observes on "get ma way from here, i'm dying" from last year's
spellbinding if yo'ure feeling sinister, which marks the beginning of
murdoch's obsession with the idea that fame is the same thing as
heartbreak. joking about the band's photogeneity and catchy tunes, he
observes, "we don't stand a chance" of making it. but the joke, of
course, is that they do and will -- and murdoch knows it. so after
making a vaguely embarrassing confession ("i always cry at endings")
he goes on to do battle with the well-worn cliche about ens and
swords, concluding, "i could kill you, sure, but i could only make you
cry with these words." only make you cry? only?
	it's belle and sebastian's most powerful moment. the punning and mok
self-effacement are brilliant, sure, but the sentiment is what makes
the song a killer. it's a loe song about love songs,  yet it never
gets mired in its own cleverness. unless you're a goon or a chump,
your tears should be welling up -- despite not having a bloody clue
what it is you should be crying about.

	the boy with the arab strap continues murdoch's evasive courtship
with fame. when murdoch sings about a brilliant painter (reprising a
character from an earlier single) who suffers from a stroke at the age
of 24 (presumably aused by the stress of her newfound fame), it's hard
not to see the song as somehow about the band itself. murdoch notes
that "her paintings are a sham, and they're going for . . ." -- what
else? -- "a grand." then he phrases a rhetorical question like a
passive/aggressive threat: "when the dealers come to view do they ever
see the real you?"
	of course they don't. the sham murdoch exposes here is that his songs
don't show himself; he inists that he can write confessional songs
while mainaining his privacy. faced with the weight of pop history,
murdoch's biggest conundrum seems to be that he can't decide whether
to be ironic or sincere. the forefathers of wimp rock -- the beach
boys, the beatles, nick drake -- wrote stark, heartfelt tunes. but
murdoch's most perplexing achievement is how he writes off the irony
vs. sicerity debate altogether, claiming that wry wit and heartfelt
self-expression can work in symbiosis.
	"chickfactor" references a hipster indie pop 'zine of the same name,
telling the story of a musician who falls in love with a woman who
interview shim. while there's plenty of tabloid sensationalism for the
indie snobs (who did the chickfactor interview? was there really a
romance? if not, will there be?), the silly intrascene schtick doesn't
overshadow the song's gloomy hypothesis about superficiality and love.
"seymour stein" treats a missed dinner date with sire records' head
honcho as a way to give the middle finger to The Man whle
simultaneaously brooding obout love gonw wrong. for murdoch and his
crew, fame's calling is insignificant when compared to the power of
love.
	while arab strap is, along with elliott smith's XO, one of the finest
pop releases of 1998, it's still not the masterpiece it could have
been. the band's turn toward  -- gasp! -- seriousness (witnessed in
the rather straight-ahead pastoral rambles of "a summer wasting,"
"ease your feet into the sea" and "simple thigs") is also a turn
toward the mundane; the aformentioned tunes should have been b-sides.
but what's most frustrating about arab strap is that murdoch
deliberately left some of his best songs of the record. but i quibble.
these glorious songs will glady break your heart if you give them the
attention they demand -- and deserve.


ouch. now my hands hurt.

oh well. hope you enjoy it.

-kerry








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