Word: tigermilk
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Dates: during 1999-1999
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When Murdoch seems not to be singing about himself, he follows many British bands in offering character sketches and social critique. Much of Tigermilk offers portraits of other young men and women who are most likely Generation Xers, from a young dreamer, Mary Jo, to a pair of lesbian lovers, Lisa and Chelsea on "She's Losing It." As elsewhere, these figures are reading books, skating pirouettes and riding buses as hobbies...
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...
...Tigermilk also references quite a bit of musical history, one of the strongest shaping factors of a post-punk generation. On "I Don't Love Anyone," in a sense speaking to Lou Reed, Murdoch tells of meeting a strange man who told him, "The world is soft as lace." The singer replies, "There's always somebody saying something." Herein lies the obligatory generational angst: a reversal of "Sweet Jane." Of course, there is also "Expectations," a song about a woman in a dead-end job; she is said to have a hobby of making life-size statues of the Velvet...
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...
...recording quality on Tigermilk has been enhanced, seemingly to counteract the multiple bootleg copies of the album floating around (I had one myself; it is worth purchasing the re-release). Originally a marketing project of sorts, Belle and Sebastian's first record should hold up well five years after its creation...