Sinister: a little bit short and a tiny bit sweet

[craigrm]

Greetings Sinistah Posse,

Just found this article on the MTV website. It doesn't contain any Earth 
shattering revelations but there's something about the idea of Stuart going 
around and writing wee notes to himself that I quite like.

Craig x





After drawing critical praise and massive college radio support for its last 
two albums, 1996's "If You're Feeling Sinister" and 1998's "The Boy With The 
Arab Strap," the mysterious Glaswegian band known as Belle And Sebastian has 
emerged with a new record, "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant," 
which will be issued in America on June 6.

Since forming in 1995, the members of Belle And Sebastian have tended to keep 
themselves in relative seclusion, playing only a handful of shows in the U.S. 
and Europe, and have avoided most media requests and interviews -- all while 
releasing some of the most delicately crafted, emotion-laden chamber pop of 
the last decade.
 
Because of the Stateside success of "The Boy With The Arab Strap," which was 
cited by "Rolling Stone" magazine as one of its Essential Recordings Of The 
'90s, the band has decided to open itself up and actually submit to 
promotional interviews in support of "Fold Your Hands."

MTV News recently chatted with Belle And Sebastian drummer Richard Colburn, 
who talked about why the band has chosen to avoid the media spotlight for so 
long as well as the meaning behind the lugubriously wordy title of its new 
album.

"It's funny, because I don't know what it means at all," Colburn admitted. "To 
be honest, I don't think [frontman] Stuart [Murdoch] does either, because he 
actually got that from a piece of graffiti that was written on the wall of a 
toilet in one of Glasgow's universities -- I think he said he saw it about 
1986, when he was attending the University itself.

"He walked in to the toilet, looked up and saw it, and thought, 'What does 
that mean?' He didn't know the context, whether it was taken from a book, or a 
film, or whatever, and he was quite intrigued by it, I think. So he just wrote 
it down. He used to do that quite a lot; just different things, writing little 
pieces down and stuff.

"It's quite strange that 14 years later, it's the title of the album," Colburn 
continued, "but I don't think too many people know what it means, if it means 
anything at all, specifically. I just think it was quite a cool sort of 
phrase."

As for the band's reclusiveness, Colburn said that it was a choice that he, 
Murdoch, and bandmates Isobel Campbell, Chris Geddes, Stevie Jackson, Sarah 
Martin, and Stuart David (who has since left the group to devote himself to 
his own band, Looper) made when they first formed Belle And Sebastian, 
although he said it has led to some bizarre rumors about the group.

"[The biggest misconception] is the whole cult thing," Colburn said, "and that 
we're really shy and sort of fey and twee, which is fair enough, because if 
you don't do interviews and you don't divulge too much about yourself, then 
people tend to make assumptions about you, which is totally natural, and 
because the music sounds the way it does, that springs to mind.

"We used to get a lot of that with the British music press, who used to give 
us a hard time about that. But we're just normal people, and it's real [lucky] 
that we have that chemistry that seems to work and happened to make some 
records.

"[There] is quite a misconception about the way we are personally and the way 
we work," he added. "We're totally approachable, but we didn't do interviews 
for one reason or another, and it's our own fault, in a way, for not coming 
across in the media and stuff. But that was the way we were working at the 
time, and we'll probably do that again after [this], 'cause we've done a lot 
of interviews lately."

Belle And Sebastian has already shot a video with director Lance Bangs for 
"The Wrong Girl," the first U.S. single from "Fold Your Hands," while Campbell 
has helmed the clip for the band's separate "Legal Man" single.

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