Sinister: Look, I'm really sorry about this

[Nick.Dastoor at xxx.uk]

   I resent the original with all the fancy quotation marks.  It probably wasn't
   worth it the first time, but I never was any good at cutting my losses.
   Anyone fancy a game of poker?

   I hope some of you will be able to 'muster up the courage' to go and hang out
   at the wussy Poetry Cafe tomorrow evening.  See you there.

   Nick xx

   Belle who? . . . they won a Brit Award when no one had heard of them

   Belle And Sebastian may not court fame, but they've sure found success. By
   Caroline Sullivan

   "Do you want to know how much I hate them? Even their name raises my blood
   pressure," says a middlingly famous pop singer of fellow Scots Belle And
   Sebastian. What seems to be an inordinate amount of spleen directed at one
   inoffensive rock band is actually par for the course. Since emerging in 1996,
   the Glaswegian octet have inspired more fuming than almost any other group,
   all due to their so-called "wussiness".
   There's a good deal of evidence for the prosecution. The six men and two
   women (none of whom is called Belle or Sebastian) were last in the queue when
   God handed was handing out the rock'n'roll swagger, and were redirected
   instead to Wistful via, with an interim stop at Puny Physiques on the way.
   Songwriter Stuart Murdoch refuses to do interviews, while the others refuse
   to be photographed (the cover of their debut album, Tigermilk, featured a
   snap of Murdoch's girlfriend). And their fans are so shy they mostly converse
   on the internet, occasionally mustering the courage to go to events with
   names like like 200 Troubled Teenagers.
   Guilty as charged, wuss-wise, and even they admit it. The obverse, though, is
   that it takes shimmeringly unusual music to provoke the reaction they do.
   Tigermilk, which is re-released this week ? original 1996 copies, of which
   only 1,000 exist, change hands for up to £800 ? is a good place to begin.
   Songs contain not lyrics but paragraphs, read/sung by Stuart Murdoch. A track
   might begin, "My brother had confessed he was gay/It took the heat off me for
   a while/ He stood up with a sailor friend/ Made it known on my sister's
   wedding day." Cellos and trumpets have higher status than guitars, and the
   tempo is slow enough for bedroom to encourage brooding.
   Those who join their insular club take out membership for life ? and on
   February 16, fans rose in a show of strength. That night, the meek inherited
   the earth ? or at least the Brit Award for best newcomer, as Belle And
   Sebastian won 9,500 votes in a phone and internet poll. Producer Pete
   Waterman, who'd expected his charges Steps to win, called the result a fix
   and demanded a recount. A member of Steps voiced the question in the minds of
   most of the nation: "Who are Belle And Sebastian?" A bad night for robopop,
   but a good one for music.
   Belle And Sebastian hadn't expected to win either, so only the drummer and
   trumpet player had been sent to the ceremony. Murdoch, who never attends such
   events, was busy that night anyway. He works as a church-hall janitor, and
   spent Brits night clearing up after the local flamenco club. "We'd heard
   rumours throughout the day that it was us, but didn't take it seriously,"
   recalls Richard Colburn, who played semi-professional snooker before joining
   as drummer. "The camera crew suddenly zoomed off to another table just as
   they were about to announce it, so we thought it was Billie or Steps ? and
   then they zoomed back to us. Rabbit-in-the-headlights time."
   Next morning, drummer Richard Colburn and trumpeter Mick Cooke found
   themselves dazedly running a dazed lap of honour on The Big Breakfast as
   other stars denounced their win. "Another Level said we cheated, but what
   really bothered me was when Cerys from Catatonia said, 'If Belle And
   Sebastian are best newcomers, I'm Robbie Williams'. When you consider that a
   year ago she was in the same boat as us..." sighs Cooke, who looks far too
   young to be in this Glasgow pub, which may be why he's restricting himself to
   orange juice.
   He, Colburn and guitarist Stevie Jackson are the Belle's lad faction,
   inasmuch as such a thing can be said to exist. The distinction comes from the
   fact that they're the only ones willing to do interviews, although they vet
   these carefully. Colburn, who flat-shares with Murdoch in the church hall,
   has taken the afternoon off setting up tables for tonight's bridge session
   ("It's very popular") to be here. Cellist Isobel Campbell and bassist Stuart
   David, who would have more to gain by being interviewed (Campbell has a solo
   band called The Gentle Waves, David a project called Looper), have elected to
   be absent, as have violinist Sarah Martin and keyboardist Chris Geddes.
   They begin, rather surprisingly, by disputing the idea that their fans are
   bashful underachievers who spend their lives on the net (although the fact
   that their website receives around 50,000 hits a week does support this
   theory). "It's too easy to put a label on us. We get all sorts, agewise and
   professionwise. I see quite good-looking people who've got girlfriends,"
   maintains Colburn, ploughing through a bacon sandwich in an indeniably
   masculine manner. "I don't look out and see a bunch of geeky, speccy shy
   people."
   "They're on stage," quips Cooke. "We're not responsible for a lot of things
   that go on on our behalf." This is a reference to 200 Troubled Teenagers, an
   event in London in February that saw gaggles of foot-scuffling girls and boys
   gather to whisper about favourite tracks from the Belles' three albums (the
   others are If You're Feeling Sinister and The Boy with the Arab Strap, both
   deservedly acclaimed). It was the band, however, who were behind the Bowlie
   Weekender in April: three days of holiday-camp fun starring themselves and
   other limelight-rejecting bands.
   "But we don't reject the limelight," argues Jackson, who's quiet enough to be
   one of his own fans, but way too tall. "It's not a predetermined policy to be
   elusive, it's just the nature of the beast. I'd love to have a hit single.
   I'd love to play Top of the Pops! That's our next goal. If you're going to do
   it, you might as well let people hear it."
   In which case, perhaps you should have signed with American music bigwig
   Seymour Stein when he offered, and not refused support slots for on Radiohead
   and Pulp tours.
   Jackson shakes his head. "That was because there's eight people in the group
   and a very complex sound. It's taken all sorts of public humiliation and
   ineptitude to get almost professional, and we need very long soundchecks,
   sometimes hours. So we can't do supports, because we need control, and
   anyway, we only want to play to people who are there to see us. We've just
   turned down the Charlatans."
   There's no evidence of ineptitude on Tigermilk, which they've decided to
   re-release because "the price [of original copies] was going a bit
   mad"(popster Stephen Duffy supposedly owns 10 copies). They evince a quiet
   pride in the record, which was recorded in five days as part of a
   music-business college course. Now held up as the the gold standard of indie
   rock, it was almost totally overlooked back in '96, attracting just one
   (favourable) review.
   "It's stood up," Colburn declares. "I still enjoy listening to it. We
   couldn't have done it any better. Even the mistakes become defining."
   Belle And Sebastian are now feeling their way toward a their fourth album. A
   It's a tortuous process, because, typically, they insist that every decision
   be unanimous. Top of the Pops notwithstanding, they will undoubtedly continue
   to dodge the spotlight and irritate those who can't understand how a band
   could turn down the bright lights for insularity and church halls. Real
   success ? which is predicted for the next album ? may drive them even further
   underground, where even more
   delicate shoots will take root.
   Tigermilk is reviewed on page 18

   (except it isn't, at least not in the edition that I've got.  Unless they are
   confusing Belle & Sebastian with Hefner)



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 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+
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 +-+                     "jelly-filled danishes"                   +-+
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