Sinister: Stuart Murdoch on Butcher Boy

[Ian Watson]

Hello everyone!

It's raining here in Brixton. Not raining in my heart, but raining outside,
really tipping it down. I can hardly see out of the window for all of the
raindrops splattered over the panes. Good for the garden, of course, but bad
for the family. I've got a shopping list and a restless 14 month old to
think about. 

So I haven't written anything here for ages and ages, it seems. I wandered
over to Bowlie and found myself staying there. But now Bowlie's closing, and
breakaway sites have been set up to replace it, and there's sniping and
griping and all sorts of strange behaviour. And the result is that nothing
really feels the same anymore. What I liked about Sinister and what I liked
about Bowlie was that both represented a sanctuary away from the real world.
Oh, there may be normal life going on, with its strange values and its
curious obsessions, but in here reality was shifted to, well, another kind
of normalcy altogether. But Sinister is quiet these days and Bowlie, or what
Bowlie used to represent, is disintegrating. And Stuart Murdoch (and
therefore, by dint of being two days younger, me) is turning 40 next year.
It all feels like the end of an era suddenly.

But I don't like the end of eras! I like eras that are just beginning! New
ideas, fresh hope, all that stuff. Like the new era that's clambering over
me right now, trying to grab my glasses while I write this. He wants to go
to the swings, but it's cats and dogs out there. Poor tyke. He's climbed up
on the sofa now and is playing with my record player, spinning the main bit
around, again and again. When he starts yanking at the arm, I'll have to put
a stop to it all. Oh, he's just worked the needle off the arm! That's that.
"You can't do that anymore," I've just told him. There's irony there
somewhere.

If you don't mind, I have two things I'd like to draw to your attention.
One, is the group Butcher Boy, who are playing in London on Saturday. Stuart
Murdoch recently wrote this about them in his diary: "Butcher Boy are
playing in Offshore Café. I feel a little bit emotional tonight, so I go for
the racing certainty that is soft chords, poetry and gentle souls. The
ambience in the café is literarily unmatched by anything I¹ve experienced
all summer; seeing Ciara, the transformation of the café into a listening
place, the man behind the counter tiptoeing with our refreshments, the music
and the 44 bus illuminating the ceiling every time it passes. It is darker
inside than out. Time has slowed. Because our hearts have slowed. Because we
are listening." It's a mere fiver in from
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/22341. Please come.

The second is the next night of my club night, How Does It Feel To Be Loved?
For the last two years, I've done nights in the autumn dedicated to specific
B&S albums. In 2005, we had a night where we played all of Tigermilk, in
order (there's dedicated DJ-ing for you, pressing play and disappearing off
to the bar for half an hour!). And last year, we had a night where all of
The Boy With The Arab Strap was playing throughout the evening (not all at
once, but peppered throughout). And this year, it's the turn of Sinister. I
won't play all of the songs all at once, but they'll be dotted throughout
the night. I was wondering which of the albums to do next, and I thought of
ten years of this list, and all you good folk picnicing, and Chris asking me
at Indietracks if I was going to the picnic and me saying no (I was in
Toronto, on my holidays). So Sinister felt like the right thing to do.

Ten years of Sinister. The end of Bowlie. A significant birthday next year.
What does it all mean? I like to think it doesn't mean anything at all. And
that the world is carrying on exactly as before, just how you like it.

Ian x




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