Sinister: Stick it up your arse and pretend it Christmas

[Linda Kerr]

    Hullo

Here is the article about Isobel from Caledonia magazine.  It has a fairly
limited circulation, so most of you won't have had even the chance to see
it.  It is a bit of an in-flight magazine, but  (Scotland's most eligible
men, the state of Scottich music - pipers, and something on whisky.  The
article itself isn't incredibly enlightening, but there are a few good
moments...
And there is nothing mentioned about the tour or new release - don't know
when the interview was done.

Words by Alastair Mabbott

"Why be in one band when you can be in two?  For Isobel Campbell, Belle and
Sebastian was not enough - so she formed The Gentle Waves.

The song drifting over the tables of Edinburgh's Elephant House cafe stops
my conversation with Isobel Campbell dead in its tracks.  It's a song
neither of us can place, from a sixties tape being played behind the
counter. "Who is that? Who is that?" she frown.  "Weird," I say.  But we
both dance around the issue, neither of us saying exactly what's on our
minds.  The nylon guitar, the plaintive male voice, the bittersweet flavour
of the song - this old recording is a dead ringer for Campbell's own, very
current, band, Belle and Sebastian.

Actually, since 1999, she's qualified for a bumper sticker reading "My OTHER
band is Belle and Sebastian".  The group's loose format - demonstrated by
their taking a year off from playing live in 2000 - has allowed members to
work on their own side projects.  Bassist Stuart David established his own
band, Looper, and became a novelist.  Campbell struck off on her own with
The Gentle Waves, of which she is singer, songwriter, guitarist, occasional
cellist and only permanent member.

Less than an hour has passed since the Caledonian photos shoot, and her
features are still skilfully coloured and exquisitely defined. It's quite a
contrast to the kind of publicity photos she's normally associated with:
stark, curious black-and-white shots which rarely featured members of the
actual band. Many Belle and Sebastian fans would be surprised to find her in
a photographer's studio in the first place, let alone chortling "ooh-er,
missus" over a piece of equipment known as the "ring flash". Simply by not
playing the publicity game , and insisting that the music takes precedence,
the group's members have acquired a reputation for being austere,
introverted and enigmatic, which says more about the business they are in
than about the band itself.  And if Campbell's any indication, the image
couldn't be further from the truth.  Bright, animated, she roots around in a
suitcase full of sixties-style gear in which she feels most comfortable.

Yet, while clearly enjoying the dressing-up, and the attention of a stylist,
she's laid down ground rules - as nicely as possible - about how she's to be
presented.  Simplicity and honesty are the watchword in Campbell's world.
The debut Gentle Waves album The Green Fields of Foreverland..., is awash
with naive melodies and imagery that could have come straight from
children's books.  Twee and saccharine to its detractors, its marriage of
Campbell's classical training and her love for French pop resulted in some
beguiling songs.  She calls it her "baby album".  But far better was to
come.  Last year's follow-up, Swansong for You, marked a leap forwards in
confidence, scope and maturity without any loss of her characteristic
directness.  The more recent Falling From Grace EP showed her to be
finessing her pastoral style and starting what looks to be a long-term
collaboration with Bill Wells, a jazz pianist who has forged bonds with
Glasgow's indie fraternity.

"I think I've got quite a good intent, really," she says, polishing off a
bowl of minestrone soup. "I'm quite cynical a lot of the time, but I think a
lot of people are really cynical and blase about a lot of things.
Sometimes, for instance, TV and advertising portray people  as being a lot
less sincere and less caring than they are, and a bit more tongue-in-cheek.
I think a lot of pop bands are like "everything is disposable now, even
people are disposable"  I just think I have got quite a determination for
the positive things."

Born 24 years ago in Glasgow's Southern General Hospital, Isobel Campbell
showed signs of musical talent when she tinkering on a piano at her
grandmother's house.  "I was fascinated by it, and my granny always said I
could have the piano to learn on" she says.  "But when the time came, when I
was about 11, my aunt was living with my granny, with a baby, and when I
asked 'Can I have the piano?' they wouldn't let me have it any more.  So
there was an exchanging of words, and my mum got me this really tacky organ
thing and I went to piano lessons and then she got me a piano for £100.
Then, after a few years, she took out a loan and got me a proper piano.  I
think she thought it was a phase.  I had to nag her for a while.  I don't
know why I was so determined to do it, but I just wanted to go to piano
lessons."

Life in Glasgow was interrupted in her teens, when her engineer father took
a job in the Middle East and Campbell went to board at George Watson's in
Edinburgh.  "It was interesting," she recalls. "It was good to mix with
people from other backgrounds.  I got on really well with my room-mate, in a
tiny, tiny room, but it was a shame for the kids who'd been there from the
first year.  It was violent for the young boys.  The older boys were just
merciless.  But the older girls didn't care too much for the younger gilrs
either.  It was just 'go to this place and see if you can survive'.  But I
quite liked it because I was older.  I was desperate to get away from my
family and stuff," she laughs.

She used to nip off to the opera with her clarinet-playing friend Rebecca,
but her main enthusiasm has always been Sixties pop.   "Oh, I don't know any
modern music," she groans, before admitting to liking some tracks by Air,
Beck and Nick Cave.  She was blown away when a boyfriend introduced her to
the records of American eccentric Lee Hazlewood and everyone's favourite
dirty old Frenchman Serge Gainsbourg.  Her current boyfriend is an indie fan
who doesn't share her Sixties preoccupations.  "We've got the same taste in
films," she says hopefully.

Even after enrolling at Strathclyde University, eventually to come out with
a BA in music, she never expected to make a living from music.  "I couldn't
think orchestras.  It's more like being part of a machine than being
creative.  I think I've got too many ideas."  Being in a band was "always a
dream, but I thought only lucky people got to do things like that.  I didn't
have a howling big rock voice, so I thought I wasn't really a singer.  Also,
I was female and I couldn't play the guitar very well."

A fateful meeting in the opening minutes of 1996 set her on the road to
turning this dream into reality.  In the queue for the toilet at Hogmanay
party, she was approached by a young singer-songwriter named Stuart Murdoch,
kicking-off a short-lived romantic relationship and a more durable creative
partnership.  They arranged a practice session and Belle and Sebastian's
debut album, Tigermilk, was recorded a month later.  Only a thousand copies
were pressed and, until its CD release in 1999, vinyl copies were changing
hands for hundreds of pounds.  The cult grew, and their first album after
being picked up by Jeepster Records.  If You're Feeling Sinister, was rated
one of the most inspired records in years.  After they pipped Steps to the
post in the Brits for Best Newcomer of 1998, causing pop svengali Pete
Waterman to splutter accusations of a fix, everyone knew their name.

A song called "Is it wicked not to care" on the third album, The Boy with
the Arab Strap, gave Campbell her first writing credit.  Even so, the
constrictions of elonging to an eight-piece band were getting to her.  With
Belle and Sebastian established, she went off to make The Green Fields of
Foreverland...recorded in a week with £4,000 of her own money.

For all the dreaminess of the music, there's an astute, practical side to
Isobel Campbell.  Major-label stars can also be found still living in rented
flats above a busy main road, while Campbell, one member of a large indie
outfit , not only managed to finance the first Gentle Waves album but buy
herself a home, too (she lives in Partick, quite close to where she grew
up).  She reckons it is not hard for someone in her position to manage that.
"But musicians and artists are usually quite untogether.  It's a bit of an
effort for me to be together most of the time as well."

She's vague as to whether The Green Fields of Foreverland...has actually
shifted the 20,000 copies it's reported to to have sold in the US.  So,
ambitious or not?  She admits it would be nice for The Gentle Waves to be
successful, but seems to trust that, by some route of other, her music will
find its way to the people who would like it.  "The thing that I'm most into
is making the best records that I possibly can.  To have a dream that is in
your head  becoming something that's on tape, that's the best thing.  And if
people buy it, that's even better," she concludes.  "I'm not under any
illusions.  I'm just learnign as I go along."  Judging by the distance she's
come so far,it's a philosophy that works pretty well."



Linda

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