Skip to main content

Belle & Sebastian

24
Belle & Sebastian

 Belle & Sebastian
Which one is Belle and which one is Sebastian? Well, actually… none of their 7 (!) members are either. This Swedish band is one of indie-rock’s most consistent and most loved bands, and for good reason. Since their debut album, 1996’s Tigermilk, they have been putting out amazing music. This band really first came on my radar when my brother (who’s ten years older and introduced me to music that wasn't being played on the radio… what we call “Indie”- whether they’re on a major label or not… if it sounds “indie” we call it “Indie”... quite a strange phenomenon… but in this case Belle and Sebastian are actually indie… having all their U.S. albums released on legendary Matador records… [that brings up another point… at what point does an Indie label get so big that they could be considered a major label? {Sup-Pop- I’m lookin’ at you!}]) and I started covering the song “Like Dylan in the Movies” in our sets. I had never heard of the band, but God damn, if that song didn’t hit me to the core right away. That song was off of their second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister, an album that’s accolades include: #75 on Spin magazine’s 100 Best Albums From 1985-2005, #75 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Best Albums of the Nineties, made it into the 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die book, had an entire book written about it, and… well shit, you see what I’m talking about; This isn’t an album to sleep on. Anyways- back to my personal narrative with Belle & Sebastian… after my brother introduced me to them I became a fan. There’s a great documentary on the band, released in 2003, titled Fans Only that you should check out. So… uh… yeah Belle & Sebastian were on my radar by the time they released their 7th (!) album, The Life Pursuit, which saw their music being used in MTV2 commercials. So I might have been a little late to the party- but what else is new? Their next album I was a devoted and loving FAN. 2009’s Belle and Sebastian Write About Love is my personal favorite. 2009 was a pivotal year for me: graduating high-school and moving to Lawrence, KS to start college… For this reason: Albums released in 2009 hold a special place in my heart (I’m looking at you It’s Blitz and Merriweather Post Pavillion). That being said, ...Write About Love could be considered their best: duets with Nora Joans, their continued exploration into more pop/dance friendly music, and (I hate to be this guy again) recording one of my favorite songs to drum to. After ...Write About Love came 2015’s super dance & pop friendly Girls in Peactime Want to Dance and 2018’s How to Solve Our Human Problems (previously released across three E.P.s). I had the pleasure of seeing Belle and Sebastian live at Red Rocks (with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra) in 2015, and by-golly, I don’t know if it was the Scottish-accent, but band-leader/main-songwriter Stuart Murdoch was charming as hell… he went into a spoken-word improve-rant in the middle of a song, pointing at some birds and saying to the crowd, “That bird is thinking to himself- what is this indie shit?” I’ll give you a full disclaimer: You’re either gonna’ love this band and their acoustic beauty and unique sound or you are going to hate them… I don’t think there is really any middle ground with this band. Funny enough, often the case with indie bands, they seem to be going dance/pop more. You can almost divide their discography into two halves, with The Life Pursuit being the bookend to both halves. Their acoustic-guitar/piano super indie roots & their more adventurous, “hey- we have more musical cards to throw down” pop-centric dance-friendly waves of recent year. Regardless of where they go, or where they are headed, it doesn’t matter because they’ve been so damn consistent. This is music you want to send to others in the mail. It ring's my bell... It's...


Belle & Sebastian


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Björk

28 Björk Björk If Billie Holiday is an American treasure, well, if you were to put that treasure underwater, froze it, thawed it out centuries into the future and doused some acid & baking soda on it, out of that treasure chest would come Björk. Originally gaining fame in her home of Iceland with her band, the Sugarcubes, Björk was bound to break solo & she did just that with 1993's Debut . Following that was 1995's Post , 97's Homogenic , 2001's Vespertine, 2004's  Medúlla , 2007's Volta , 2011's Biophilia  (the first album where I was truly a fan), 2015's Vulnicura and 2017's Utopia . There's a lot to unpack there... you can't skip her first three or four albums, they're all amazing. I like Volta  just because it seems to be the loosest (and most fun) album she has. Vulnicura  was her break up album, with Björk expressing that the album reflects her feelings before and after her breakup and the healing process. Her legacy...
Post a Comment
Read more

Eels

91 EELS EELS After a couple of song-rich, keyboard-dominated albums released under the Man Called E moniker, Mark Everett morphed into the trio Eels with 1996’s [DreamWorks Records released] Beautiful Freak . At its best, the debut gave a trip-hop twist to the California singer/songwriter tradition; at its worst, it suggests one more bummed-out wise guy’s take on Beck’s collage-style rock. With a sense of humor that skews toward cynicism that’s alleviated occasionally by bouts of sincerity, Everett is not the likeliest subject to make a transcendent album about death. But he nearly pulls it off on 1998’s Electro-Shock Blues . The music is somber but not sedate, with bursts of saxophone, off-kilter orchestration, and outright noise evoking the turbulence beneath the deadpan vocals. The singer battles not only depression but also his penchant for irony, and his struggle to move beyond them makes for a fascinating if sometimes morbidly downcast listen. On 2000’s Daisies of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dimlite

75 Dimlite Dimlite I discovered Dimlite when I was at the Love Garden record store in Lawrence, KS. I was just flipping through the record collections, the vinyl, as you will & as you do and I came across the artwork for Dimlite’s Prismic Tops LP. This album was released in 2010. Now, I’m embarrassed to say, I was too broke at the time to afford the record. But that artwork stuck in my head and I went home and had to check out what that music sounded like… especially if the cover art was that trippy. So like a typical millennial, I went and found it on a streaming site. The music inside was just as titillating as the cover-art. Just like the cover-art: the music morphed and transcended upon itself- heading in every direction. Beats born out of beats. Dimlite is the project of Swiss producer Dimitri Grimm. He produces some jazz-odyssey-filled-hip-hop-beats. He first released the A/DD EP in 2003 and the full lengths (2005’s) Runbox Weathers and (2006’s) This Is Embracin...
Post a Comment
Read more