Sinister: an interview with the belle's

[Christine Irene]

from dirty vicar's favourite publication...

http://www.unison.ie/entertainment/stories.php3?ca=61&si=1059871


i'll also cut and paste it for ease of enjoyment...

"Ow! Ya bastard!" yells Belle & Sebastian's Stuart
Murdoch. The singer leaps up, swats whatever bit him,
and grinds it with a heavy heel. Murdoch might front
one of indie's most lovably fey bands, but with
aggressive beetles, he takes no prisoners.

Murdoch is skinny, 34, and newly blond. We're chatting
in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, the venue for a Belle &
Sebastian gig that night. Some 8,000 locals are
expected, all sweet on the (mostly) retro-pop
mini-symphonies that are this Glaswegian band's forte.

Earlier the group hosted an unusual press junket at
Shea Stadium in New York, doing interviews during a
New York Mets vs Colorado Rockies baseball game. The
novel approach to promo worked well. "It was very
relaxed and there was plenty of time for a beer and a
chat," he says. "Baseball's a game that comes in
waves."

As Belle & Sebastian gear up for the release of their
fifth album, Dear Catastrophe Waitress, all this
suggests a change of tack. Until now, they have
conducted media relations with caution. When 1999's
The Boy with the Arab Strap scored them a Brit for
best newcomer, only two of the band bothered to attend
the ceremony. Their reticence, and coy, Super 8-shot
videos, have at times been seen as pretentious.

Butchange is afoot. The keyboard player, Chris Geddes,
concedes that signing to Rough Trade was partly
contingent on playing ball with those pesky journos.
"We're like any group; we want people to hear our
records. We've had a really good reaction to the
album, and with Trevor producing we want to give it a
decent push."

Ah yes, Trevor. As in Horn. As in the erstwhile
Buggles member and ongoing studio boffin best known
for his slick hit-making with Frankie Goes To
Hollywood, and, more recently, Tatu. How did that come
about? "We played the Coachella Festival in California
last year," says Murdoch. "The lady who cleaned our
caravan told us she worked for Trevor, and his
daughter was a fan of ours. Trevor got in touch, so we
arranged a meeting out of curiosity. We all really
liked him, and thought, 'Why not?'"

Anyone worried that Horn might have supplanted Belle &
Sebastian's strings and reverb-drenched guitars with
sequencers can relax. His sonic approach on Dear
Catastrophe Waitress is very much simpatico, and this,
combined with a leap forward in the band's own writing
and arranging skills, has resulted in what is arguably
their best album to date.

Asked what events influenced his writing, Murdoch
simply says: "A break-up is always fertile ground for
a songwriter." When I ask him to unpack the lyric of
"Wrapped Up in Books", he laughs and says it's about
"committing adultery of the mind". Surely that's
harmless? "You would think so, but it can also be the
beginning of the end."

It's difficult to know what to read into that remark,
but a song that definitely references Murdoch's split
is "I'm a Cuckoo". An ace pop number he wrote on
piano, "Cuckoo" was translated into a brass and
twin-lead-guitars arrangement. Any machismo has been
cleverly sieved from the Thin Lizzy-esque tropes
within "Cuckoo", but it's still a shock to find Belle
& Sebastian tipping the hat to Phil Lynott's
hedonistic rockers. What gives?

"It can't be ignored that if you're in this business
you're basically trying to sustain your childhood for
as long as possible," says Murdoch. "A big part of my
childhood involved listening to Thin Lizzy. Phil
Lynott was certainly one of my heroes. I liked those
cheeky wee winks he used to do."

The Prospect Park gig is a triumph. Belle & Sebastian
are infinitely better than the shambling outfit I saw
back in 1999. At the end of "The Boy with the Arab
Strap" there's a telling moment. Murdoch says that, as
there are children in the audience, he doesn't want to
sing the graphic last verse. As the crowd cheer, he
lowers his eyes. It seems that part of him still wants
to be The Catcher in the Rye.

'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' is out on Rough Trade on
Monday 




~stine

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