Sinister: odds and ends

[Januarythaw at xxx.com]

I was parusing this site for an article about another musician when I came 
upon these two things for Belle and Sebastian. Thought I would share them 
with you all...

http://www.theavclub.com/bonusfeature1.html  the lists are of the best albums 
of 1999.  its on toward the bottom so you'll have to scroll down, I think 
these lists were made by writers for the onion.

And these two reviews were written some time ago. How long? I'm not sure, i 
dunno if anyone even cares but I figured perhaps you would. well take care 
ciao 
iris
i am drunk with gravity

Belle & Sebastian 
The Boy With the Arab Strap 
(Matador) 
The Glasgow-based musical cooperative Belle & Sebastian's out-of-nowhere 
American debut If You're Feeling Sinister was one of last year's most 
striking albums. The tightly structured, but never predictable, pop and the 
literate, fey lyrics of singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch combined to 
create a sound that prompted thoughts along the lines of, "Oh, so that's 
what's been missing." "No one writes them like they used to, so it may as 
well be me," Murdoch sang on "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying," and it 
sounded like a mission statement; sunny-sounding British pop and sensitive 
alienation hadn't gone so tightly hand-in-glove since The Smiths, a 
comparison from which the group, however disingenuously, shies away. Sinister 
was followed by a series of exciting Eps (Lazy Line Painter Jane, Dog On 
Wheels, and 3...6...9 Seconds Of Light) that sometimes echoed that album and 
sometimes didn't, expanding B&S's sound in ways that worked more often than 
not. For every song that didn't quite connect, there were two that connected 
brilliantly, indicating that the eight (and sometimes more) band members 
weren't content to repeat a winning formula. The follow-up to Sinister, The 
Boy With The Arab Strap, is in the vein of those Eps. Boy offers up pleasures 
less immediate than Sinister, but they're ultimately just as substantial. "It 
Could Have Been A Brilliant Career," the title track, and "A Summer Wasting" 
have a familiar, acoustic-dominated sound. But then there's the antiquated 
electronic noises heard on "Sleep The Clock Around" and "Is It Wicked Not To 
Care," which hands the vocals over to a female member (the typically cryptic 
liner notes don't indicate a name). While it might be a better album without 
the spoken-word "A Space Boy Dream" and the uncharacteristically terse 
"Chickfactor," it's possible to see their inclusion as a good thing. (The 
same can't be said, of course, for the occasional moments that sing the 
pains-of-being-a-rock-star blues. Nobody, except possibly other rock stars, 
cares.) While not a pristine instant classic like its predecessor, The Boy 
With The Arab Strap announces that Belle & Sebastian is in it for the long 
haul, and seemingly committed to not standing still. As long as it keeps 
turning out material as lovely as the album-closing "The Rollercoaster Ride," 
that's a wonderful thing. --Keith Phipps 

Belle And Sebastian 
Tigermilk 
(Jeepster/Matador) 
Maybe it's no coincidence that one of the most exciting, least conventional 
bands to emerge in the latter half of the '90s also had one of the least 
conventional starts. Picked up as the project of a university marketing 
class, the ever-expanding Scottish band Belle And Sebastian unexpectedly 
achieved stardom on a small scale with its first album, Tigermilk. Expanding 
its audience in both Europe and the U.S. with the masterful If You're Feeling 
Sinister, the group proved that the world, or at least an enthusiastic cult, 
was ready for sensitive teen music for grownups: ornately crafted melodies 
accompanied by lyrics that were clever without being cute and dominated by a 
personality that was sensitive and retiring without being mopey. In the wake 
of this success, Tigermilk, originally limited to 1,000 copies, took on a 
nearly legendary quality, becoming widely bootlegged and even more widely 
sought after. Wisely, it's now been reissued legitimately, and it almost 
lives up to its reputation. The album-opening "The State I Am In" could sound 
a bit more impressive, but only because B&S cut a better version of it on an 
EP, and it's hard to imagine the band outdoing the versions of the two songs 
that follow. "Expectations" and "She's Losing It" more than live up to high 
standards set by the group's later work, displaying the ability to 
incorporate a small orchestra's worth of instruments into economical pop 
melodies while staking out unique lyrical territory. (For example: "Your 
obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange / Making 
life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay.") That's true of most of 
Tigermilk. The faux-electronica of "Electronic Renaissance" lends the album 
one of its few head-scratching moments, while "I Don't Love Anyone" finds 
chief songwriter Stuart Murdoch still struggling to find his voice, but 
nothing gets in the way of making Tigermilk an essential album for both Belle 
And Sebastian fans and virtually everyone else. --Keith Phipps 
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