the valley advocate here in western mass has a review of twattybus in this week's issue. here it is (please pardon my typing errors): Cry With These Words: belle and sebastian will break your heart if given the chance by joshua westlund belle and sebastain are glasgow's masters of inconcspicuous chic -- that unassuming, delicate, obsessively self-conscious, white middle-class indie rock art of looking cool whie trying not to look like you're trying to look cool. their songs all sound the same, regretlessly, even gleefully: cheery major chords (strummed ever so gently) lope about, breezy moogs gurlge and chirp, bagpipes hum majestic melodies, and other obscure, barely audible instruments meander as they please, adding slight minimal flourishes over main singer/songwriter sturat murdoch's creamy croon. it's ever so pastoral, chip[per and catchy -- "good vibrations" set in scotland's vibrant, verdant highlands. since releasing their debut, tigermilk, belle and sebastian hve become avatars of indie rock's most hallowed tradition: playing hard to get. tigermilk was limited to 500 vinyl copies, and the band has since released several other similarly obsucre EPs and singles -- prompting fans to hoard, obsess and spend exorbitant amounts of cash (an original copy of tigermilk recently sold for about $1,000 at an auction). and belle and sebastian not only demand devotion from their fans, they're also smugly self-awre of their talkent that they can't help but point it out in their songs while winking and smirking about their deliberate marginality. "nobody writes them like they used to -- so it may as well be me," murdoch observes on "get ma way from here, i'm dying" from last year's spellbinding if yo'ure feeling sinister, which marks the beginning of murdoch's obsession with the idea that fame is the same thing as heartbreak. joking about the band's photogeneity and catchy tunes, he observes, "we don't stand a chance" of making it. but the joke, of course, is that they do and will -- and murdoch knows it. so after making a vaguely embarrassing confession ("i always cry at endings") he goes on to do battle with the well-worn cliche about ens and swords, concluding, "i could kill you, sure, but i could only make you cry with these words." only make you cry? only? it's belle and sebastian's most powerful moment. the punning and mok self-effacement are brilliant, sure, but the sentiment is what makes the song a killer. it's a loe song about love songs, yet it never gets mired in its own cleverness. unless you're a goon or a chump, your tears should be welling up -- despite not having a bloody clue what it is you should be crying about. the boy with the arab strap continues murdoch's evasive courtship with fame. when murdoch sings about a brilliant painter (reprising a character from an earlier single) who suffers from a stroke at the age of 24 (presumably aused by the stress of her newfound fame), it's hard not to see the song as somehow about the band itself. murdoch notes that "her paintings are a sham, and they're going for . . ." -- what else? -- "a grand." then he phrases a rhetorical question like a passive/aggressive threat: "when the dealers come to view do they ever see the real you?" of course they don't. the sham murdoch exposes here is that his songs don't show himself; he inists that he can write confessional songs while mainaining his privacy. faced with the weight of pop history, murdoch's biggest conundrum seems to be that he can't decide whether to be ironic or sincere. the forefathers of wimp rock -- the beach boys, the beatles, nick drake -- wrote stark, heartfelt tunes. but murdoch's most perplexing achievement is how he writes off the irony vs. sicerity debate altogether, claiming that wry wit and heartfelt self-expression can work in symbiosis. "chickfactor" references a hipster indie pop 'zine of the same name, telling the story of a musician who falls in love with a woman who interview shim. while there's plenty of tabloid sensationalism for the indie snobs (who did the chickfactor interview? was there really a romance? if not, will there be?), the silly intrascene schtick doesn't overshadow the song's gloomy hypothesis about superficiality and love. "seymour stein" treats a missed dinner date with sire records' head honcho as a way to give the middle finger to The Man whle simultaneaously brooding obout love gonw wrong. for murdoch and his crew, fame's calling is insignificant when compared to the power of love. while arab strap is, along with elliott smith's XO, one of the finest pop releases of 1998, it's still not the masterpiece it could have been. the band's turn toward -- gasp! -- seriousness (witnessed in the rather straight-ahead pastoral rambles of "a summer wasting," "ease your feet into the sea" and "simple thigs") is also a turn toward the mundane; the aformentioned tunes should have been b-sides. but what's most frustrating about arab strap is that murdoch deliberately left some of his best songs of the record. but i quibble. these glorious songs will glady break your heart if you give them the attention they demand -- and deserve. ouch. now my hands hurt. oh well. hope you enjoy it. -kerry _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? 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