Sinister: There's no doubt that Murdoch is unusually handsome

[Nick.Dastoor at xxx.uk]

Here's the Guardian review of the new album.   Completely spot on, to my mind.
And, heaven's above, it actually reviews the album and not the band's press
profile.  Whatever next?

Underneath that is a piece from the Independent On Sunday.   Ooooh - Nicholas
Barber 4 Stuart Murdoch.   What do you think of his contention that Isobel could
be the next Britney is she was so inclined?  I have my doubts, but now the BMA
have got involved, who knows?

>From Mick's interview:

>B&S is sometimes called the biggest swindle of the 90's. The last band to get
that
>treatment was the La's ... Do you feel honoured ?

What?  He's making it up!  Has anyone here ever heard them them described as the
'biggest swindle of the 90s'?  Is the interviewer mixing up Belle & Sebastian
and the Mirror Group pension fund?  Those crazy French!  Or has it lost
something in translation?

>Is it because we're considered to be doing nothing new? I'd go along with that.
>We never try particularly hard to do something new. Very few bands that try
that sound good.

I find this a bit depressing.  Maybe Mick interprets 'new' more narrowly than I
do.   If I didn't think the band were doing anything new I wouldn't be that
bothered about them.  Musically, OK the ingredients have been used before, but
it's an interesting  enough... cake.  And lyrically, I think Stuart is utterly
unique.  But I've said all this before.

Here's that review then.


Mind Your Own Business
Belle and Sebastian have many strengths ? if only they'd play to them, says
Maddy Costa

Belle and Sebastian
Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant (Jeepster)
***

When it comes to pop, there are singers, guitarists, and the other, somehow
anonymous musicians who make a song sound brilliant even though you've no idea
what they're doing. People don't care about drummers, and generally would need
to be directed by neon signs before they could pick out a bassline. It's
precisely this tendency that Belle and Sebastian strive against. When they won
their best newcomer Brit award in 1998, it was drummer Richard Colburn and
trumpeter Mick Cooke who went on stage to collect the gong. Singer Stuart
Murdoch might write the songs, but it was bassist Stuart David (recently
departed to concentrate on his own band, Looper) who last year published a
novel, Nalda Said.
Democracy has long been Belle and Sebastian's guiding principle; the trouble is,
this isn't a good thing. Their last album, 1998's The Boy with the Arab Strap,
was the first to feature songs not written by Murdoch, and it was significantly
weaker than its startling predecessor, If You're Feeling Sinister. While
Murdoch's title track mused on the silent burden carried by "The Asian man with
his love/hate affair with his racist clientele", guitarist Stevie Jackson's
Chickfactor pondered, more pleasantly than thought-provokingly, over the
strangeness of being interviewed by a fanzine writer.
A similar disparity characterises Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
(surreally, Murdoch once saw the words scrawled on a toilet door). It's not that
the songs not written by Murdoch are bad - far from it. Jackson's The Wrong Girl
is a dreamy but dynamic pop song, whose catchy lyrics make it the album's most
immediately memorable song. Beyond the Sunrise may be the best song cellist
Isobel Campbell (who also fronts the limpid Gentle Waves) has yet written: a
Hazlewood/Sinatra-style duet with the burnished richness of western movies, it
is unlike anything else Belle and Sebastian have produced.
That doesn't mean it's unlike anything that anyone else is producing, however:
Arizona's Calexico recently released their second album of spaghetti western
music; meanwhile, the charts are clogged with songs about loving the wrong
people. That's the problem: of the octet, only Murdoch's writing is
extraordinary. Who else currently is writing couplets like "Lisa learned a lot
from putting on a blindfold when she knew she had been bad / She met another
blind kid at a fancy dress, it was the best sex that she ever had"? That song,
The Model, is Belle and Sebastian at their most euphoric, Murdoch's
tongue-in-cheek vocals skipping over a jaunty rhythm and strings as thrilling as
the sight of 3,000 balloons rising into the sky.
Murdoch is renowned for his character studies of unhappy schoolgirls: debut
album Tigermilk was reeling with them. But that's no preparation for The Chalet
Lines, a subdued piano ballad written from the perspective of a girl who has
been raped. Its simplicity is searing; the only jarring thing about it is that
it's followed by a rinkydink song called Nice Day for a Sulk. The latter is a
deliciously teasing answer to Belle and Sebastian's detractors, who dismiss them
as mimsy moppets, but the juxtaposition is a mistake.
When they concentrate on their strengths, this is an incomparable group of
people. Campbell and violinist Sarah Martin's strings are increasingly
wonderful; Chris Geddes grows more inventive with his use of keyboards (he
brings a sultry soulfulness to Don't Leave the Lights on, Baby); just two notes
from Cooke on trumpet can transform a song. In turn, the writing should be left
to Murdoch. It might not be democratic, but it would mean that Belle and
Sebastian's albums would be exceptional again, instead of good with flashes of
breathtaking greatness.



Independent on Sunday 28 May 2000
Music: Whatever you want to know - they're not telling: Reluctant indie stars
Belle And Sebastian giving a press conference? Nicholas Barber can hardly
believe his ears:

Something weird is going on here. A gold invitation arrives in the post. You
take it to a club just off Piccadilly Circus. Inside, you're met by a woman
carrying a tray of complimentary beers. Funk is playing over the PA. Purple
velvet curtains cover the walls. Journalists lounge on settees. A tripod
mounted film camera points at a podium. And on the podium there is a long
table lined with microphones, beer bottles and glasses of water. It looks
for all the world like a pop group's press conference.
And that's what it is. The weird part is that the pop group in question is
Belle And Sebastian, and if these Glaswegians are famous for anything,
it's for not wanting to be famous. They turned down support slots on tours
with Radiohead, Pulp and Suede and turned down Cameron Diaz's request to
write a song for one of her films. Their leader, Stuart Murdoch, refuses to
do interviews. And no such thing as a conventional band photo exists. If
they're feeling co-operative they'll send the press an artfully shot picture
of two or three members, probably in disguise. If they're feeling less co
operative the photos will feature a random selection of their friends
instead.
But the people who have managed to discover Belle And Sebastian adore
them. The group's impeccably arranged, dreamy music and piquant, personal
lyrics inspire the same devotion as The Smiths' did in the 1980s. Their fans
are obsessive, in a civil sort of way, and organise regular picnics and
conventions. And the word is spreading. In 1998 Belle And Sebastian's third
album reached number 12 in the charts and in 1999 the band beat Steps to the
Best Newcomer Brit Award. They sent only two of their eight members to
attend the ceremony.
Belle And Sebastian's fourth album, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a
Peasant, won't be in the shops until June. And yet, in the first week of
May, advance copies had already been mailed to the Press, along with
invitations to a question-and-answer session. Even on the way to this event
I wondered if it was a hoax. But at 5.30 sharp, Belle And Sebastian
trooped onto the podium and took their seats. All seven of them are present
(the bassist, Stuart David, has just left the band), including the enigmatic
Stuart Murdoch. What's more, they're willing to discuss everything from the
new album title (graffiti spotted on a toilet cubicle door, apparently) to
the time Murdoch dressed in leopard-print trousers in homage to Rod Stewart.
So what about the fabled shyness? Has it occurred to them, I ask, that their
refusal to adopt the conventional marketing strategies of a corporate pop
group has worked as a kind of marketing strategy itself? "It's just
frustrating when that overshadows the music," says Chris Geddes, the
pianist. "When that's what people talk about in relation to the band. I'm
not pleased that that's what we're known for."
"It's just the way it's worked," adds Richard Colburn, the drummer. "It's
not deliberate. Fortunately or unfortunately that's the way it's gone."
Murdoch speaks up. "Sorry, what's your name again?" he asks, looking me in
the eye. And then, having established who he's talking to, answers the
question. "It's safe to say, I don't think about it all," he says.
What is most remarkable about the press conference is how quickly Murdoch
emerges as the leader. Often, he'll let the others talk for a while before
delivering a definitive, sardonic answer, always making eye contact with the
person who asks the question. It's difficult to reconcile someone so
charismatic and candid with the image of a semi-recluse who never does
interviews. "I did a few right at the start," he objects. "I just didn't
really enjoy them too much. Talking about yourself is. . . you've got to be
wary of that sort of stuff. But I think also we've all been frustrated by
talking openly and truthfully to people and then what we've said being
misinterpreted and put out of context. And the only answer is, simply, not
to do interviews. And it's easy. You just don't do them. It's fine."
Belle And Sebastian aren't quite so arcane after all. They are just that
rarest of beasts in the pop industry: a band who prefer to go about things
in their own way. "We're not particularly awkward," says Isobel Campbell,
the giggling, sweetly nervous cellist. "We're just not puppets. There's a
huge difference."
The group started life in 1996 when Richard Colburn was studying music
business administration at Glasgow's Stow College, and a course project
required the students to produce 1000 copies of a single. Colburn brought in
a demo made by his friends, the two Stuarts. The students were so impressed
that they manufactured a whole album: a thousand vinyl copies of Belle And
Sebastian's debut, Tigermilk, were duly pressed. Before it was re- released
on CD last year, those original pressings had been changing hands for up to
pounds 300 each.
The band came into being, then, as "a college experiment". There was never
any plan to conquer the world, let alone to win a Brit. Now that stardom is
forcing its attentions on Belle And Sebastian, they're determined to
move at their own pace - an attitude which seems all the more admirable when
you see how easily they could have played the pop star game. I'd probably
advise against the short-sleeve shirt and tartan tie combination, but
there's no doubt that Murdoch is unusually handsome, with a jawline and
cheekbones which many more publicity-hungry wannabes would swap their
guitars for. Isobel Campbell, too, with her blonde pony tail, sparkling eyes
and radiant smile, could replace Britney Spears on a few teenagers' walls if
she were so inclined. She isn't.
On the other hand, Belle and Sebastian aren't completely afraid of fame.
Several of their seemingly perverse decisions - such as the meagre turn- out
at the Brits - were actually motivated by practicalities and economics. The
resolution not to support some big name bands on tour is another example.
"Just logistics, actually," says Colburn. "Quite a lot of the times it
happened it was overseas, so it just cost too much to do it. It was nothing
to do with the bands in question. It just wasn't possible financially."
Campbell offers her own point of view. "You know, it's just like, you don't.
. . we're rushed off. . . we don't get. . . our soundchecks are, you know,
legendary. There's a lot of things to do, we don't have samples or that. So
our concerts would be. . . even worse. But I don't know, I can only talk for
myself, but we were never into courting too much stuff anyway, so. . . I
suppose if someone we loved asked us we might do it."
So there you have it. Belle And Sebastian really are trying to
communicate with the public. But in the end, it might be better if they let
their music do the talking.
'Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant' is released on Jeepster
Recordings on 5 June
The Independent on Sunday
Features
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