Waking up to Belle and Sebastian

Even as I lived in Scotland for six years, Belle and Sebastian were always a hit and miss for me. To me the greatness of Scottish pop has always been represented by past acts such as Lloyd Cole & the Commotions and the Blue Nile and while I liked "The Boy With the Arab Strap" in patches I generally snubbed B&S for being too self-consciously twee. I somewhat sticked to this thought never paying close attention or, when so, always letting the less positive sides of their music overshadow the positive ones in my judgement. But their double compilation CD "Push Barman to Open Old Wounds" which gathers all singles and EPs between 1997 and 2001 puts things into perspective and I revise my opinion by acknowledging that B&S have an excellent body of work behind them. That they wrote a handful of great tunes with both an ear for a great melody and a good arrangement. That like most good contemporary bands they incorporated elements of pop's past (Love, The Kinks, Nick Drake, Burt Bacharach, 1980s guitar pop among others) and melted them into a sound of their own. That although I would stop short of calling Stuart Murdoch a poet, he writes far more engaging lyrics about the sad aspects of youth than the vast majority of his peers. I find him and Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy the most inspiring British songwriters in recent memory.

I am still a bit put off by those moments when B&S go overly self-conscious about their preciousness, though. The songs which are self-referential (Belle and Sebastian, This is Just a Modern Rock Song), the songs which wear the label "twee" too much on their sleeve (Is It Wicked Not to Care?, A Century of Fakers) and the silly name they choose for the band are all weaknesses. But then anyone who puts out songs like Lazy Line Painter Jane, The Stars of Track and Field, Seeing Other People, It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career or I'm Waking Up to Us has something special going on about them.

A Scottish couple visiting Lisbon last year was surprised to hear that Belle and Sebastian had an audience in Portugal due to the fact that their charm had partly to do with the poetic quality of the lyrics. They thought this was something that could not be fully grasped by Portuguese audiences. They were partly right but to me not only the lyrics work by suggesting rather than revealing any obvious meaning but it is the sense that Murdoch is telling a story coupled with the gorgeous melodies and chamber pop arrangements which drive the listener's attention. That's how their appeal is universal.