Word: sebastian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Though bands marketed for a college audience are not ruled by the top-40 station formula-create pop hit, flood market, wait for other pop hit-Belle and Sebastian and a number of college bands are constantly crossing over into the larger sea of alternative/main-stream pop. With the success of the group's previous two albums, The Boy With the Arab Strap (1998) and If You're Feeling Sinister (1997), Matador is bold enough to officially release the first album, which late last year was going at auctions for more than $600. Both were acclaimed by music and fashion magazines...
With such a breakneck schedule, one would expect the music of Belle and Sebastian to mirror many independent domestic projects in poor recording quality, sloppy production and slackerly filler material. Instead, lyrics and music form an almost hyper-aesthetic experience--carefully produced, with fine-tuned instrumentation and clever lyrics. The singer Stuart Murdoch softly whispers phrases about the uncertain nineties with an approach reminiscent of the '70s poet-singer Nick Drake. The instrumentation includes a trumpet, cello, flute and beautiful keyboard that unite in complex harmoniousness...
This holds true for Tigermilk as much as it does for Belle and Sebastian's more recent work. Many of the songs, intensely personal, describe states of being and moods of troubled 20-year-olds. Yet far from being self-indulgent fluff, a perceptive and sharp wit prevents the songs from growing tiresome. On the opening track, Murdoch confides, "The priest in the booth had a photographic memory for all he had heard. He took all of my sins, and he wrote a pocket novel called The State I Am In. And so I gave myself to God, there...
Earlier on the album, Belle and Sebastian nod to the Smiths. While one of the tracks on Arab Strap is explicitly about the record label representative who signed Johnny Marr from the Smiths, on "Electronic Renaissance" the chorus is a revisited version of the Smith's "Panic." Gently mocking many of the current pop bands who have incorporated sophisticated remixing and other mixology, Murdoch sings, "Play a game with your electronics, take a step to the discotheque...Hand in hand with the Electronic Renaissance is the way to go, you're learning, soon you will do the things you wanted...
Other songs on Tigermilk are politically conscious in an apolitical, '90s way. The band sings about the dangers of abusive relationships, as well as the continual Generation X fear of joblessness. (The real liner notes of Tigermilk read, "Sebastian is older than he looks. If he didn't play music, he would be a bus driver or be unemployed. Probably unemployed...