Sinister: more senseless speculation.....

[craigrm]

All this talk of "traditional W"'s has got me quite excited as you can 
probably well imagine. But after a brief search of the SPIN website I'm sadly 
unable to shed any light on the whole percussionist-hand job phenomena.

Do we have any drummers on the list who can perhaps clear this up ?. I suspect 
it's probably an indisputable Rock fact along the lines of bassists always 
getting the weird groupies.

Cheers &  24k solid gold props to all involved and present at Friday's 
TigerMulching extravaganza, it was tops and I for one had a great time despite 
my terminal lack of dance floor skills.

Anyway that's all I really have to say cos I'm quite busy at work (Y2K got a 
bit messy round here) but before I head off here's a nice TM review I found 
while trawling through spin.com. Enjoy... and love me forever.

Lol Craig xxxxx


"The problem with the hype surrounding Belle and Sebastian is a very unusual 
one. You see, it's all true. Brilliant songwriters? Check. The best new band 
in a decade? Probably. A band who can make you believe in music again? 
Absolutely. Oh, and all that stuff about their unreleased first album--the one 
recorded as a college economics class project, the one pressed onto only 1,000 
vinyl copies, the one that recently went for over $1,200 on an Internet 
charity auction--being a lost masterpiece? Yeah, that's all true too.

Recorded almost four years ago by local older-than-he-looks songwriter Stuart 
Murdoch and the five musicians he recruited to help him, Tigermilk is finally 
being released on CD by Matador Records. It is not the shambling, trembly 
musical baby-steps a cynical critic might expect. Far from it. Don't let the 
Belle's unassuming manner fool you: they knew what they were doing from the 
start, and here's the proof: Tigermilk is in no way an astonishing first 
album. It is an astonishing album. Simple as that.

Though there are some stylistic surprises, the ten songs collected here are 
constructed in the same basic way as every other Belle song: Murdoch's high, 
warm tenor appears, supported by an acoustic guitar, before quietly being 
surrounded by rich flourishes of instrumentation; Stevie Jackson's massively 
underrated lead guitar fills, Isobel Cambell's understated cello, and the 
occasional burst of trumpet or recorder. But what is immediately striking 
about them is their overall looseness.

If the Belle's most recent LP, The Boy with the Arab Strap, deserved any 
criticism, it was due to a certain tightness in the performances. The songs 
were there, the aura intact, but perhaps the raised expectations affected 
Murdoch more than he let on. In comparison, Tigermilk positively swings. From 
the jaunty, irresistible "She's Losing It" to the album's crumbling, fragile 
Nick Drake-worthy numbers, "We Rule the School" and "Mary Jo," Murdoch's music 
is so unassumingly confident one can't believe it was the band's first time in 
a studio together. Even the record's biggest "reach," the Love meets Pet Shop 
Boys rush of "Electronic Renaissance," reaps huge dividends, somehow managing 
to be both a clever analysis of Britain's post-Ecstasy social climate and kind 
of groovy at the same time.

What the long-awaited unveiling of Tigermilk ultimately proves, though, is 
that whether he likes it or not, Belle and Sebastian's success is inseparable 
from Stuart Murdoch's. The onetime church-sweeper has long been a fan of 
immortalizing his musical career in songs ("It Could Have Been a Brilliant 
Career," etc.) and Tigermilk is no exception. Rather, its content is even more 
self-referential. Opener "The State I Am In" (familiar to those diligent 
enough to pick up the Belle's four essential import EPs) is a masterwork of 
self-revelation and deception, relating pre-success tales both poignant ("I 
was surprised, I was happy for a day in 1975," "riding on city buses for a 
hobby is sad") and fantastical ("I got married in a rush to save a kid from 
being deported / now she's in love").

And then there's "My Wandering Days Are Over," the album's best song and one 
of the finest the group has ever set down. Perverse as ever, Murdoch makes the 
crowning moment of his debut a notice of his retirement: "You know my 
wandering days are over/Does that mean that I'm getting boring?/You tell me." 
Bringing back Sebastian and Belle as characters (the names seem to be the 
alter egos of Murdoch and the band's are-they-or-aren't-they chanteuse, Isobel 
Campbell), Murdoch spins scenes of urban ennui into melodic gold. More than 
anything else, Belle and Sebastian's songs work because of their honesty.

Murdoch can paint and catalog sad-sacks and dead-end streets like no one else, 
but in his voice it's never objectification: he's been there himself. More 
famous in Glasgow at the time for making up band names rather than playing in 
them, the Murdoch who put this record together was hungry for opportunity 
himself. With Murdoch finally able to put his strumming where his mouth was, 
Tigermilk is the sound of an aimless life picking itself up, and he knew it: 
"It's got to be fate that's doing it/A spooky witch in a sexy dress has been 
bugging me/With the story of the way it should be/With the story of 
Sebastian/and Belle the singer, yeah."

Sounding like everything and sounding like no one but themselves, Belle and 
Sebastian are, and apparently have been, the real deal. These songs have 
nothing to do with hype, with being the new Smiths, with refusing interviews, 
with watching French films and carrying on. Simply put, these songs are pure 
magic. Play them again and again. It's Belle and Sebastian's world. We're just 
glad we live in it."

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