Sinister: TBWTAS review from addicted to noise

[Tara Widmer]

Attached is a review, most noteworthy because the reviewer pretty much
neglects to discuss the album at all for most of it.  But he gives it 5/5 so
I reckon he liked it lots.
*********
Belle and Sebastian
The Boy With The Arab Strap, Belle and Sebastian (Matador)

Less Bang, More Bob 
These songs get under your skin and infect your hum reflex. Symptoms include
bobbing your head from side to side to the beat and doing Eddie Murphy's
White People Dance. 

By Kevin John


Lars Ulrich, drummer for Metallica, has to be the crankiest musician alive
(at least, he used to be).

His trademark in interviews is to rip apart every band in the Western world,
including metal ones. In fact, for a while there, I thought the only group
he really liked was Diamond Head. (He actually went so far as to moonlight
as liner-notes scribe for their Behold The Beginning retrospective.) And I
seem to recall him saying that the video for REM's "Shiny Happy People" made
him want to smash his television to pieces. 

Now, for some sick reason, I began to use Mr. Oilrig as a sort of music
measuring tool -- as in, "Wow, Lars would really hate this song!" And then I
got to thinking that it might be a fun idea to make a tape called "Songs
That Would Probably Drive Lars Ulrich Fuckin' Bananas!" The list would
include well, yes, "Shiny Happy People," but also Kate Bush's "Wuthering
Heights," Madonna's "I'm Going Bananas," Roxanne Shante's "Roxanne's
Revenge," DeBarge's "Be My Lady," Suede's "Sleeping Pills" and, most
definitely, the Roches' "Ing."

The point I'm trying to make here, is that music lovers often conceive of
musical irritation or obnoxiousness or drawing lines in the sand as the
province of brutish metallers, punkers or sometimes, if they thought hard
enough about it, even gangsta rappers. Indeed, those are the very qualities
so frequently cited in defense of the value of such music. But I'd like to
posit that, while most of the above songs for Lars' tape have listeners that
like to feel pretty and witty and gay, we shouldn't downplay their power to
irritate the shit out of, say, a world-hating art student or a
reality-obsessed Source reader. The shiniest, happiest song can produce as
extreme an effect as the loudest, snottiest screed.

How this relates to Belle and Sebastian is that I would definitely include
"Judy and the Dream of Horses" (the last song off their breakthrough album,
If You're Feeling Sinister) on Lars' tape. The title alone is enough to make
me laugh out loud at how Lars wouldn't even give it the time of day.

In fact, scanning the titles of a Belle and Sebastian album reminds me of
paging through those Scholastic Weekly Reader catalogues that sold books
like "Freckle Juice" and posters that read something like "Everyone Has Bad
Days" and were adorned with pictures of kittens caught up in yarn. Regard:
"Spaceboy Dream," "The Boy with the Arab Strap," "Simple Things," "The
Rollercoaster Ride" and "Ease Your Feet Into The Sea," all of which are from
the new album. If any band could set the silliest book title I've ever heard
("Frosty: A Raccoon To Remember") to music, it would be Belle and Sebastian.

Of course, there are also titles like "It Could Have Been A Brilliant
Career," "Is It Wicked Not To Care" and "Dirty Dream #2," so I don't want to
misrepresent the band. In fact, they rarely radiate a childlike cuteness the
way Papas Fritas or Shonen Knife sometimes do. But their songs do access the
quality of those obnoxious songs about clowns and whatnot with which your
niece or nephew (or son or daughter) return from their first few weeks at
kindergarten. Not in terms of content, but in their simple humability, their
sheer insistence. Apart from a stray Shante or Missy Elliott rap, the songs
of Belle and Sebastian are the only ones I teach to my friends who don't
listen to music.

Teach to sing, that is. I have no idea what Stuart Murdoch and company are
singing about, and I'm not all that interested. Besides, my friends are only
hip about hair and clothes, so I'd have no one with whom to discuss their
content. The primary fascination Belle and Sebastian hold for me is that for
all their verse-chorus-verses and rhyming stanzas, these aren't songs, but
rather viruses. They're insidious carriers that get under your skin and
infect your hum reflex. Symptoms include bobbing your head from side to side
to the beat and doing Eddie Murphy's White People Dance.

Usually, this menace is achieved by repeating lines with slight variations,
making it easier to break down your immune system. From "It Could Have Been
A Brilliant Career": "Painting pines (vines?) in a school that was too
well-known/ Painting pines with a friend that had gone before." From "Sleep
The Clock Around": "It takes more than this to make sense of the day/ Yeah,
it takes more than milk to get rid of the taste." From "Ease Your Feet Into
The Sea": "Stay with us 'til we get old/ Stay with us 'til somebody decides
to go."

If you have the slightest weakness for their intimate, AM radio-influenced
folk-pop, their tunes will barge into your life and paralyze your mouth into
a Cheshire grin for the duration. (I happen to be in this deliriously happy
category.) But, if all you see around you is ugliness, the catchiness will
abrade like Chinese Water Torture.

How's your forehead feel now, Lars? 
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