18th November - Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister

Artist – Album: Belle & Sebastian – If You’re Feeling Sinister

Released: 18^th November 1996

Sounds Like: A good start

Officially Belle & Sebastian’s debut, Tigermilk, was released 5 months earlier, but released seems a far too powerful word to describe that album’s issue: the album was the culmination of Stuart Murdoch’s work on a college music business course and it’s limited pressing of just one thousand copies was his final project, and so the album wasn’t so much released as stealthily snuck out. Luckily, it was just too good to slip the attention of eagle eyed (eared? Do eagles have ears??) music fans though and word spread of a terrific record that was rarer than a tasteful Miley Cyrus video.



By the time of If You’re Feeling Sinister all this goodwill towards the group had translated into a record contract (with the still terribly indie Jeepster Records) and a resolve to, you know, actually be a real band. It also was their first album in general circulation and to be covered by national newspapers, and consequently it was – for all but a privileged few – the first time anybody had heard their songs. They weren’t to be disappointed.



Each track is a triumph of wit and majestic music. ‘Me and the Major’ is a chugging tribute to the differences between generations, the title track sounds warm and comforting but it has a snide humour and candidly deals with suicide in confident manner, whilst ‘Like Dylan in the Movies’ and ‘The Fox in the Snow’ are fey and beautiful. For some time ‘Seeing Other People’ has been my favourite, with its hilarious memories of “Kissing just for practice”.



A backstory like Belle & Sebastian’s might never crop up again. Our world of Spotify and Youtube and Twitter means that it’s unthinkable that its impossible for bands today to earn the aura that the early, mysterious B&S thrived on. Further, few bands have ever released a pair of such perfect albums as Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister with their first couple of attempts. As Murdoch sums up in ‘Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying’: “Nobody writes them like they used to so it may as well be me”

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       The Stars of Track and Field – 4:48

2.       Seeing Other People – 3:48

3.       Me and the Major – 3:51

4.       Like Dylan in the Movies – 4:14

5.       The Fox in the Snow – 4:11

6.       Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying – 3:25

7.       If You’re Feeling Sinister – 5:21

8.       Mayfly – 3:42

9.       The Boy Done Wrong Again – 4:17

10.   Judy and the Dream of Horses – 3:40

Listen to ‘Seeing Other People’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=583_nEvuRvw

Also released on the 18^th November:

1974: Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Also released on the 18^th November:

1997: Modest Mouse – The Lonesome Crowded West

6th Feb - Belle and Sebastian's The Life Pursuit

Artist – Album: Belle and Sebastian – The Life Pursuit

Released:  6^th February 2006

Sounds Like: Belle and Sebastian in Groucho glasses and a fake moustache

For some bands, no matter how they dress their music up they will always sound like themselves. The Life Pursuit sees Belle and Sebastian really branch out and follow a multitude of musical whims, and yet always sound very Belle and Sebastian-y.

Stuart Murdoch, the band’s undisputed leader following the departures of Stuart David and Isobel Campbell an album earlier, experiments with everything from lounge jazz to country to Motown (without straying too far from their indie domicile). ‘The Blues Are Still Blue’ sounds like Roxy Music, ‘To Be Myself Completely’ reminded me of latter-day R.E.M and ‘Song for Sunshine’ is decidedly funky.

Two songs in particular stood out: ‘Dress Up In You’, a song I first heard on a free CD from the now sadly defunct music magazine The Word, has the gentle, bashful sound and witty lyrics of their earliest releases; ‘Funny Little Frog’ is more an indicator of how they have grown, a rocky, confident and deceptively straight forward love song, and their highest charting single in the UK, hitting #13.

Not all the experiments are completely successful and at times you miss the flow and completeness of their greatest records Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister. But this is still a good album.

Albumaday... rating: 6/10

1.       Act of the Apostle – 2:55

2.       Another Sunny Day – 4:04

3.       White Collar Boy – 3:20

4.       The Blues Are Still Blue – 4:08

5.       Dress Up in You – 4:23

6.       Sukie in the Graveyard – 3:00

7.       We Are the Sleepyheads – 3:33

8.       Song for Sunshine – 4:06

9.       Funny Little Frog – 3:08

10.   To Be Myself Completely – 3:17

11.   Act of the Apostle II – 4:20

12.   For the Price of a Cup of Tea – 3:19

13.   Mornington Crescent – 5:40

Listen to ‘Funny Little Frog’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fT6pssrES8