Sinister: Do They Mean Us? They Surely Do!

[Peter Miller]

Former listee Alexis Petridis has written a very
interesting review of The Life Support in The
Guardian. It is an entertaining piece which will
surely not be bettered, and it is always a pleasure to
read about oneself in the national press, so I thought
I would post it here in case anyone missed it. It is
presented without further comment:

-------------------------------------

Pop CD 

Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit 

 (Rough Trade) 

Alexis Petridis
Friday February 3, 2006
The Guardian 

The seasoned rock critic invariably approaches a new
Belle and Sebastian album with apprehension. This is
not caused by the album or the band, but by Belle and
Sebastian's fans. They may be commonly depicted as the
drippiest in rock, but nothing could be further from
the truth: they're like the Chelsea Headhunters, if
the Chelsea Headhunters had bought their clothes from
Sue Ryder and cultivated a working knowledge of
nouvelle vague cinema. Say a word against the Scottish
septet in print and they launch kamikaze raids on your
inbox and write letters to your editor in cat's blood.


Most artists would kill for supporters as devoted and
ingenious. Long before the Arctic Monkeys, Belle and
Sebastian's fans had worked out that the internet
could raise a band's profile: block voting by their
web community won the band the 1999 best newcomer
Brit. The downside is that a die-hard fanbase like
Belle and Sebastian's will put up with almost
anything: they're too busy clobbering non-believers to
death with their vintage BOAC holdalls to criticise
the band itself.
The records that snared the fans - Belle and
Sebastian's second album, 1996's If You're Feeling
Sinister, and the three subsequent EPs - were as
astonishing as the ensuing releases were patchy.
Blessed with a unique writing talent, leader Stuart
Murdoch persisted in letting other members contribute
songs, to deleterious effect: few bands have ever been
so hobbled by the willingness to "let Ringo have a
go".

However, 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress served
notice of a shift in approach. Murdoch was back in
charge, while the production desk was manned by Trevor
Horn, the man behind both Frankie Goes to Hollywood's
Relax and Barry Manilow's Could It Be Magic '93. The
result was their best album in years: they were
nominated for Mercury and Ivor Novello awards and sent
as War on Want ambassadors to the Palestinian Occupied
Territories, the latter occurrence prompting hopes
that the charity may yet try to resolve the conflict
in East Timor by parachuting in the Pastels.

Its follow-up attempts to repeat the feat. The idea of
Belle and Sebastian decamping to LA to work with a
big-name producer would once have seemed as improbable
as Belle and Sebastian driving a Harley-Davidson
around a hotel suite filled with empty Jack Daniel's
bottles and coked-out nymphettes; even so, the choice
of Tony Hoffer as producer seems less bold than Trevor
Horn. Horn is a maverick; Hoffer is just one of those
Americans who get called when dreary British bands
like Idlewild and the Thrills need a bit of
Californian polish. The end result follows suit.

Dear Catastrophe Waitress saw Belle and Sebastian
confidently applying fresh musical ideas to their
wispy template: electro-pop and dub, Glitter Band
stomp and, most unlikely of all, the twin guitar
attack of Thin Lizzy on the wonderful I'm a Cuckoo.
The Life Pursuit offers further experiments but they
don't quite have the same consistency or impact as
their predecessors. The electronic glam of White
Collar Boy and Song For Sunshine's spidery funk sound
fantastic, but there's something forced about We Are
the Sleepyheads' frantic disco, and the odd
combination of syncopated beats and affected
Bolan-esque warble on Sukie in the Graveyard is just
too lumpy to digest.

Sukie in the Graveyard highlights a paradox at The
Life Pursuit's heart. On its predecessor, the best
tracks were the most musically adventurous. Here, you
can applaud Belle and Sebastian for trying something
different, but the highlights stick closest to their
well-worn blueprint. The carefree jangle and swooping
melody of Another Sunny Day could have come from any
of their albums to date, while Dress Up in You employs
every trick in Belle and Sebastian's well-thumbed book
- ineffably melancholy piano, muted orchestration,
choirboy vocals, a lyric that slowly reveals itself to
be written from a female perspective - and still
sounds heartbreaking rather than hackneyed. Act of the
Apostle II and The Blues Are Still Blue are gorgeous
and both token homages to Stuart Murdoch's beloved
Felt (there is, incidentally, at least one somewhere
in the lyrics or music or sleevenotes of every Belle
and Sebastian album, a kind of musical Where's Wally?
for people who know more than is strictly healthy
about 1980s indie); the former is inspired by Felt's
impenetrable instrumental albums Train Above the City
and Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads to Death, the
latter obviously indebted to Felt frontman Lawrence's
latterday project, Denim.

Literate, droll, moving and often very beautiful, The
Life Pursuit certainly isn't a bad album, but it's a
disappointment after Dear Catastrophe Waitress. The
diehard fans, who, even as you read this, are filling
their fountain pens with sulphuric acid, won't mind.
The less committed might be advised to wait and see
what Belle and Sebastian come up with next time.

---------------------------

And this... is me.

I do not like the packaging of the new album. It is
sexist, promotes paedofiddlia, and the knees are
nobbly. The latter is a problem that has beset B&S
before, notably in the Read It In Books video.

It is a good album though, I give it four stars.

I think maybe the excitement of the approaching
release date was a bit too much for Sol Campbell.

I hope to attend the Hammersmith Palais concert, so I
might see some of you there.

Kind regards,

Sister Disco



+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
 +-+               Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut!                +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+