Isobel
Campbell and Mark Lanegan: "Ballad Of The Broken Seas"
(V2 Records,
'March' 2006)
Deus Ibi
Est/Black Mountain/The False Husband/Ballad Of The Broken
Seas/Revolver/Ramblin' Man/(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?/Saturday's
Gone/It's Hard To Kill A Bad Thing/Honey Child, What Can I Do?/Dusty Wreath/The
Circus Is Leaving Town
"You were such a good girl then"
After a couple of false-starts with the Billy Wells
album and an EP with Mark Lanegan, Isobel finally goes the whole way and makes
a complete album in the same way that Stuart Murdoch once 'used' her: most
reviewers and fans who'd never heard of Isobel in 2006 missed the point but
Isobel is the creator here and Mark her 'muse', inspiring her to write songs
that are dark and gritty and urban; a far cry from her role in B and S as the
breathy sunny one. As we've seen, the change from muse to creator is a huge one
but Isobel goes one step further here on perhaps her second most-successful
album to date and completely re-invents herself from a vulnerable romantic to a
dark and desperate desperado on the run from the darkness in her soul. Although
Mark sings largely throughout the album, with his gravelly voice automatically
making the songs sound darker and nastier, it's Isobel whose firmly in charge,
writing nine songs to Mark's one (alongside two covers). This gives Isobel free
reign to indulge in her darker side without having to change her singing style
- instead throughout most of the album her angelic voice sounds like a taunt to
yet another Lanegan-voices victim, destroyed by love, the law, the bottle or
all three.
There's undoubtedly a chemistry between the two
despite their very different backgrounds and polar opposite voices (Mark really
is a tortured soul, who famously didn't show on the first night of the tour to
promote the album because he was in rehab, yearning to do good despite his
start in a 'grunge' band, quite different to B and S' acoustic early songs,
while Isobel is turning into the epitome of the good girl turned bad in this
era). That's actually quite amazing given that the pair never sang together for
this album: she was afraid to leave Glasgow - he never got it together to fly
out of America (their next two albums will be done side by side though). The
public certainly seemed to like it, with the album reaching a UK peak of #38
(higher than all but the two most recent Belle and Sebastian studio albums) and
inspiring the pair to make a further pair of albums later. The critics too, generally
liked it - comparing the album to Nick Cave getting together with Kyle Minogue,
although truly Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra is more like it (with Isobel in
the 'Lee' role), getting away with stuff Mark wouldn't on his own because its
accompanied by Isobel's little-girl-lost voice.
Despite the album cover of the pair in a hotel
room, apparently not speaking to each other, its' the later albums where the
pair tend to act like a 'married couple' growing apart. This album is all about
internal monologues about guilt and sin, with Isobel acting as either the
'conscience' or 'devil' running amok in Mark's head, her whispering voice often
hard to hear against his growl. Despite being made largely in Glasgow, this is
also quite an 'American' flavoured album: like Isobel's solo and 'Gentle Waves'
records but more so this is a 'Western', the soundtrack of a film filled with
slow building peaks of sound, gongs, stuttering guitars and lots of 'air'.
Unlike 'Swansong For You' though (which was the sound of a duel about to take
place), this album has the feel of a post-shooting, with an atmosphere of
relief tinged with sadness and fear at a next one coming along. 'Do You Wanna
Come Walk With Me?' is the closest Isobel has ever come to writing a love song,
the pair of singers' voices dancing around each other in a way that
resoundingly says 'yes!' However songs like Mark's 'Revolver' and especially the album closer 'The Circus
Is Leaving Town' return to the river of Isobel's emotions and offer yet more
pained goodbyes to an old part of her life. Without the theme and autobiography
of 'A Swansong For You' 'The Ballad Of Broken Seas' was never likely to scale
the same heights and unlike that album there are some lesser songs here that
don't quite come off (('Saturday's Gone' is melancholia too far and opener
'Deus Ibi Est' tries to hard to create an artificial atmosphere of threat).
However 'Broken Seas' is another strong record on which both creator and muse
deserve a bow - just as in Belle and Sebastian's early days.
'Deus Ibi Est' is a story-song that features
Mark croacking his way through a series of prose that we'd normally expect
Isobel to race through in her high-pitched voice. The character has hit rock
bottom, called up to fight a war he doesn't believe in and 'beating a march to
someone else's drum' (is this another
Campbell song about having to fit into the B and S format?) Some of the lyrics
are a little over-forced ('Oh demons I shall shame you!') while other songs do
a better job at conjuring up a jagged atmosphere. Already the combination of
voices is working well, however.
'Black Mountain' sounds like a traditional
marching song but is apparently a Campbell original (even if it sounds
suspiciously similar to 'Early In The Spring'), with a man so full of passion
he 'flew into the sun' and a dog 'much blacker than night' who ';lives in a
house where nothing is right'. The catchy chorus ('Lie! True! Lie! True!') is a
clever idea, as is the slightly creepy backing full of lurking menace and
shadows (the song is played on the 7th note of the key which never quite
resolves throughout the song and give 'release', an old songwriting trick but
very cleverly used here all the same)
'The False
Husband' is another song of betrayal
and bitterness that may be again aimed in Murdoch's direction, with such digs
as 'your tongue was working overtime' and 'something fought and died today'.
Although Campbell wrote every line, mixing them between her and Mark works
really well, as if two sides of a couple are
aiming these songs at each other instead of one not giving the other
chance to reply. The pair even sing their parts 'over' each other during a
chorus that once again sounds like a pure Western.
'Ballad Of The
Broken Seas'
title track has a drunk trying to stop drinking because his doctor's ordered
him to, but the idea depresses him so much he reaches for the bottle. Isobel
may still be singing about Stuart here, with his often used metaphor of the
'sun' being used here by his ex to sum up their once inextinguishable energy:
'we fucked up the sun into kingdom come'. A little over-dramatic compared to
other songs, this is actually one of the lesser tracks on the album.
Mark's 'Revolver' sadly isn't a tribute to the finest Beatles LP but a
tale of how hurt and loss reaches places even bullets can't match. The song is
notably similar to Isobel's writing style, though, with the idea that 'we're
missing something, don't know what it was' and that only the other person has
the power to pull the trigger.
Hank Williams' famous 'Ramblin' Man' sounds strangely at home amongst the
country-tinged songs of loss on this album, although Mark strains rather too
hard to hit the higher notes he needs. Isobel's electronically treated voice
then takes up a counter-vocal that sounds rather mocking in this new
arrangement and works very well. In all, not a bad cover with Geoff Allen
securing what must be a unique album credit (for 'whip'!)
Isobel's '(Do You Wanna) Come Walk With Me?' is a shy invitation to romance,
not just a walk, with the pair of vocalists now sober and happy, with the
'pathway of light' separating the pair's rooms a symbol of light in a whole new
sense. This suits Isobel, whose used to doing this sort of thing, but Mark just
sounds croaky. The single acoustic guitar accompaniment works really well
though.
'Saturday's
Gone' is Isobel back in breathy
mood for a song that's rather hard to hear. That's a shame because both tune
and lyric are pretty good, Isobel doing a good job at copying Murdoch's writing
style with a character whose 'not like other girls' but has 'demons up her
skirt'. Before too long the relationship has turned into the sound of a roaring
lion and the look of a slithering snake, however.
'It's Hard To
Kill A Bad Thing' is an instrumental by guitarist Jim McCulloch (sadly no relation
to the Wings guitarist) whose playing has been a highlight of many of these
songs. The result is nice, with a strong riff and a counter-melody played by
strings just as in the days of old whilst being understandably heavy on guitar,
but might have been best left as a B-side or EP track and doesn't really fit in
on such an emotionally charged and lyrical album.
Isobel's 'Honey Child, What Can I Do?' is slightly more upbeat than normal,
with two characters hoping for a better tomorrow. There's even a very Beatley
chorus ('Maybe I'm a stupid fool...'), but sadly this rather slight and
repetitive song never quite takes wing.
'Dusty Wreath' is Isobel alone at the piano
on another near-instrumental that contains just two lines, repeated once ('Oh
dusty wreath, your loving was everything to me'). It's another song that might
have been better kept in the vaults, although it offers a useful chance to hear
what might be Isobel's songwriting taking place before our ears (she plucks out
the melody, gingerly, doubles it more confidently, then sings the vocals
off-key, suggesting this is a rehearsal tape). No one else but Isobel appears.
Isobel's album finale 'The Circus Is Leaving Town' picked up a lot of
radio airplay I remember and sums the album up quite well: Mark's depressed,
everything's over and things have to change. This song would have fitted in
well on 'A Swansong For You' and again has the idea that what was once an
'empty page' has been filled and is over for good. 'You were such a good girl
then' Mark mockingly sings, seemingly unaware that its Isobel writing that line
to herself, wondering at how tame and malleable she used to be before learning
a 'different beat, a different tune'. This sad song is a strong way to end the
album but runs out of steam surprisingly early and perhaps needed another
middle eight or change of pace or even a counter-vocal from Isobel to fully
come alive.
Still, even if this collaboration isn't perfect it
does have chemistry and shows both singers in a good light, allowing Isobel to
be taken seriously as a writer and letting Mark have something to get his teeth
into as a singer. An album made for the twilight hours when you can't sleep and
everything is going wrong, 'The Ballad Of The Broken Seas' is sometimes boring
but often moving and as neat an answer to Isobel's increasingly desperate
search for a new direction as she could have found. Dare I say it, I actually
prefer this album to the 'Life Pursuit' record out the same year.
Isobel
Campbell "Milkwhite Sheets"
(V2 Records,
October 23rd 2006)
O Love Is
Teasin'/Willow's Song/Yearning/James/Hori Horo/Reynardine/Milkwhite
Sheets/Catchel Wood/Beggar Wiseman Or Thief?/Loving Hannah/Are You Going To
Leave Me?/Over The Wheat and Barley/Thursday's Child/Bird In The Wood
"Sweet as a wind in the
heather"
The clues seemed big that this was going to be a
'return' to the old days for Isobel: the title loosely sounds like 'Tigermilk'
and interviews before the album revealed this was a 'concept' album based
around the work of three female folk writers: Jean Ritchie, Anne Briggs and
Shirley Collins. However, this largely traditional folk songs album (with six
new songs by Campbell and one by friend and guitarist Jim McCulloch) is folky
in a completely different way to the Belle and Sebastian sound and is more like
something Bert Jansch or Roger McGuinn would do than what we expected from
Isobel. In many ways that's a good thing: Isobel gets the chance to play around
with her vocals a lot on this album, using double-tracking and stereo panning
to make her 'breathy' style sound more substantial here. The backing is often
great too, especially the chiming scary ride that is folk standard 'Are You
Going To Leave Me?', turned from a simple lament into a turbulent epic.
Campbell also has a real feel for a lot of the genre, modernising a lot of
these traditional songs and making them sound contemporary-yet-timeless in a
'Pentangle' type manner. As a learning experience, this is a great one and
while none of Isobel's later albums really use a lot of this album's 'feel' or
textures, you feel she took a lot of confidence from having made it.
However, Isobel is a better composer than a
vocalist, which makes the choice of a mainly covers album a rather odd one.
What's more, the 'new' songs Campbell did write for this record aren't amongst
her best, being either instrumentals or poor attempts at re-capturing the
'sing-songy' old style folk lament. A lot of this record feels as if its
refusing to go anywhere near the Murdoch love-story - but the wounds are still
so fresh that Isobel hasn't quite worked out where to go next. Released so soon
after the ocean of emotion that was 'The Ballad Of The Broken Seas' and that's
a shame: it's like finding a novelist you really like who follows up a 700-page
book you really loved with a novella of no real substance; yes its clever in
its own way but it's no substitute for where their talents really lie. Ah well,
Isobel can do what she wants I suppose, jut think of this as a sort of extra
snack in a busy year rather than a main course. Note: two of the songs had
already appeared on the above EP (though sadly EP highlight 'Black Is The
Colour' isn't here) but are reviewed 'properly' here.
The traditional 'O Love Is Teasin' would be lovely if we could hear
Isobel properly instead of hidden behind a tonne of echo (even Stevie would
have warped at this much reverb). The guitar and Isobel's voice are lovely
though on a song about finding love isn't quite what you thought it was.
'Willow's Song' is by Paul Giovanni (a film
soundtrack writer best known for 'The Wicker Man'), although the tone is pure
'Fold Your Hands, Child' - complete with slightly out-of-earshot voices, creepy
violins and backward gongs. We don't know who Willow is but she tries to lure
the listener in with a 'stroke as light as a feather', which is nice of her.
Isobel's own 'Yearning' has the neat analogy 'dreams are for
knowing, seeds are for sowing, ebbing and flowing, while my love is glowing' on
an impressionistic song with some lovely
cello parts but which never quite settles down.
Isobel also wrote about the mysterious 'James', presumably her friend
and frequent side-guitarist Jim McCulloch who plays lead on this lovely
instrumental even though Isobel (who gets the credit) doesn't appear. Things go
a bit pear-shaped around the middle when guitar and orchestra go a little out
of synch with each other, but the first half of the piece is a lovely mesh of
two melodies joined together by light percussion.
The traditional 'Hori Horo' is one of the most successful songs on
the album, with Isobel's angelic voice well suited to a tale of sweet and
innocent love in the Scottish highlands, where the narrator's boyfriend is
'sweet as a wind in the heather'.
'Reynardine'
is also traditional and a song much covered (Bert Jansch did it too). The funny
name belongs to a funny rogue who lures a maiden to his castle and has his
wicked ways with her. Alas this isn't one of the better versions of this old
folk song and lacks Isobel's usual capacity for the unexpected.
McCulloch provided the title track of 'Milkwhite Sheets', a moody
instrumental for guitar and cello that really shows off how well Isobel can
play her 'first' instrument' but is in danger of falling into 'Pentangle
noodling instrumental' territory, without any sense of urgency or desire to
link this piece back to the album.
'Cachel Wood' sounds like an oldie but is
actually a new song by Isobel that features some lovely ye olde lyrics ('An
everlasting fire imperishing when leaves decay') but unfortunately rips off the
tune to 'Pop Goes The Weasel' so obviously you half expect to hear a 'popping'
noise.
Isobel also wrote 'Beggarman, Wiseman Or Thief?' about another evil
man luring a true maiden off the straight and narrow before she gets stopped in
her tracks with the great line 'To a wolf you cannot be wed - choose a young
man instead!' This song is nice but slight and needs more backing than a simple
guitar part and yet more unsuitable echo.
'Loving Hannah' is sung a capella and
features Isobel in the 'male' part, with a maiden capturing the narrator's eye
during a church service one day. I've always rated Isobel a better singer than
most B and S fans often do and her voice is quite delightful here, although a
full three minutes without variation will test the patience of many.
The album highlight is undoubtedly 'Are You Going To Leave Me?'
Multiple Isobels dreamily drift in and out of the ghostly track as the song
builds layer by layer and creates quite a crescendo by the end: first McCulloch
un-tunes his acoustic guitar, then a series of rolling drums and finally a
collection of deep bass piano notes with the 'echo' pedal down hard and loud
create a quite hypnotic, other-worldly state. If only the rest of the album had
been as inventive as this 'Milkwhite Sheets' might have sat at the top of a
prestigious 'folk' tree alongside Pentangle 'Basket Of White' and the early
Byrds albums.
'Over The Wheat
and Barley'
is a mournful cello instrumental credited to Isobel , which would have been
really lovely with some lyrics to go with it. At least this piece sounds like a
folk classic from years ago, though, with Isobel now at one with the genre.
Closing epic 'Thursday's Child' is more like Isobel's 'normal'
work and returns to the semi-autobiography of her 'Gentle Waves' albums. 'Twenty-five years living in a fantasy -
better choose reality' she sighs (for the record she was 30 when the album came
out), reflecting on an enjoyable time spent on a 'ferris wheel' before it all
turned to 'ashes' and left her without a ride. The chorus then has Isobel as a 'Thursday child' with 'far to go', mournfully
trying to trace her way back down a path that once brought her so much
happiness. This other album highlight is a truly effecting track with Isobel's
vocal now shorn of it's innocence and joined by a mournful pedal steel and
percussion so slow it sounds like it's physically stomping on her dreams. 'No
regrets, won't forget' is the closing line, but it doesn't sound as if Isobel
means it.
A 'hidden track' then arrives after a minute or so
silence, apparently named 'Bird
In The Wood' while it was worked on in the studio. A slight 45 second
fragment accompanied by a musical box type accompaniment, it simply bids us
'goodnight' and would have made a fine song in it's own right.
So ends a highly unusual and only partly successful
album, one where Isobel reveals the folk roots we never even knew she had and
throws in one of her deepest, most moving songs right at the end to keep us
guessing. The folk backing is though exactly right for conveying the heartbreak
Isobel's been writing about of late - it's just a shame there isn't more of it
on this album, which tends to take the 'easy' way out and simply give us folk
songs about maidens and suitors or new songs that sound like old ones about
maidens and suitors! We'll pick Isobel's story up in a couple of years when
she's back making the soundtrack for non-existent Westerns in a couple of
years' time...
Isobel
Campbell and Mark Lanegan: "Sunday At Devil Dirt"
(V2 Records,
May 13th 2008)
Seafaring
Song/The Raven/Salvation/Who Built The Road?/Come On Over (Turn Me On)/Back
Burner/The Flame That Burns/Shotgun Blues/Keep Me In Mind, Sweetheart/Something
To Believe/Trouble/Sally Don't You Cry
Deluxe
Edition Bonus Disc #1 (Live): Revolver/Carry Home/Willow's Song/Sand/(Do You
Wanna) Come Walk With Me?/The Circus Is Leaving Town/Ramblin' Man
Deluxe
Edition Bonus Disc #2 (Studio): Keep Me In MInd Sweetheart/Fight Fire With
Fire/Asleep On A Sixpence/Violin Tango/Rambling Rose, Clinging Vine/Hang On
"
Isobel and Mark's second album sounds like much of
a collaboration this time around, even though Isobel still does most of the
writing and Mark the singing. 'Sunday At Devil Dirt' was written by Campbell
with Mark's voice in her 'head' for the first time and instead of recording
their parts an ocean apart, Mark flew to Glasgow specially so they could do
their vocals together (Isobel will return the compliment next time around and
actually has never left the States since). If anything the mood is darker this
time around, as Isobel makes the most of Mark's gravelly voice and a mood
that's very much moody monochrome rather than glittering colour. To use our
cowboy analogy, it's the moment of high drama when a cowboy has just shot his
gun, but doesn't yet know if he's hit anything or whether he'll be hit first in
response. Much of the album sounds like the effect seen in many cowboy films
where the whole film sounds as if its running in slow motion, in fact, what
with the slow, barely moving and Mark's deepest vocals yet.
The result is arguably the weakest of the pair's
full-album collaborations, lacking the newness and invention of 'Broken Seas'
without the eclecticism of 'Hawk'. It's still a good album with many
highlights, though, highlighted by the pair of songs written by Isobel's
occasional collaborator Jim McCulloch which add an austere acoustic vibe to the
record in between all the orchestral polish (making this record sound not
unlike Johnny Cash's 'America' series with producer Rick Rubin before his death
in this same period). Everything else here, though is Isobel's, with Mark not
writing anything for this album. A full album like this might have been better
still. The theme of it - fittingly given how Mark has had to come to make it -
is travel, with the cowboy narrators not as fussed about their love life and
prospects but caught up in the drama of upheaval and pastures new, wondering if
they will ever see the places they used to know so well again.
Considering
that the album is all of eight years old, it hasn't half been re-issued a lot
over the years: a deluxe edition released alongside the original contains a
seven-track concert made up of songs from the first album (of which only a
slightly more histrionic 'Ramblin' Man' is particularly different), while a
later edition from 2010 features five songs from the album sessions that were
never released at the time, occasionally known colloquially to fans as the
'Keep Me In Mind, Sweetheart' EP after the opening track, even though
technically it was never released separately from the album. Of these the
hopeful cowboy song 'Fight Fire With Fire' and the nicely poppy 'Rambling Rose,
Clinging Vine' are easily the best, although none are exactly long lost
classics with instrumental 'Violin Tango' positively painful.
Back to the album proper, though, and 'Seafaring Song' seems a
strange place to start. 'I've travelled the world...but still further to roam'
Mark drawls, reflecting on the old days when he was settled and happy: 'that
was so long ago'. This track is best described as slow-building tension, but it
would have been nice to have a little more happening.
'The Raven' is better, an atmospheric
song with an especially eerie string arrangement on a tale that quotes from
Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem. The raven, here with a broken wing, clearly
signifies death so the narrator runs amok with (so its hinted) an under-age
mistress, finally collapsing and dying while 'the warning bell was knelling'. Mark
has never sounded more like Lee Hazelwood than here.
'Salvation' is the album's quiet
highlight, with a wasted and weary Lanegan finally enjoying the peace he
thought he would never find. 'I went out in that bad old world to roam, and I
felt like a stranger coming home' sighs Mark as Isobel prettily hums alongside
him on a song written by guitarist Jim McCulloch.
'Who Built The
Road? is a rumination over God and
whether his plans really involved such misery for the narrators. By the end,
though, the narrators don't believe in deities - they reckon the road was built
by 'all of us, on a chain gang with our bare hands', human beings struggling
within their own pain. Mark and Isobel sing together at last on another of the
album's better songs.
'Come On Over
(Turn Me On)'
is another slow-burning song with a strong string part running through it with
the narrators turning to each other so they can 'know right from wrong'. Both
Mark and Isobel sound like they're heading down a dangerous path to me, though,
on a song that promises much but never quite takes fire.
'Back Burner' is, at least, different to
anything else the pair have done. Fading in on a shuffling tribal chant of the
title Mark gets increasingly hysterical in his pleas 'I won't let you
down...promise you I'll stick around'. Unfortunately this song tends to stick
in its groove rather than finding a new one and doesn't really make much of an
impression.
'The Flame That
Burns' sounds like a spiritual,
reflecting on how humans have an innate ability to get through pain and
hardship due to something indefinable inside that 'burns'. There's a fun hook
on this one and a great solo from McCulloch, but again the chorus is repeated a
few too many times for comfort and ends up making 'Flame' sound a bit wet.
'Shotgun Blues' is a gutbucket blues and not
a terribly convincing one either, with an electronically-treated Isobel trying
to sound like a 'siren' luring her man to his death. There's an awful lot of
double entendres in this song ('I'm layin' on my bed, so you better take that
shotgun and fill it full of lead'), which is at least different (had Isobel
been listening to similarly risque B and S B-side 'Meat and Potatoes'?!), but
again this song gets stuck in its groove far too quickly and won't get out. Mark
most likely doesn't appear.
'Keep Me In
Mind, Sweetheart' was the album's single and one of the album's better songs.
Reverting to the acoustic once more, Mark sings most sweetly on a song that
sounds like Isobel has written it after Lanegan's 'collapse' during the first
tour and in hope that the pair will work together again. Promising to be there
whatever happens, Isobel makes the most of what she learnt from her folk album
'Milkwhite Sheets' on a lovely song of devotion and support.
'Something To
Believe' is nice too, another acoustic
song that sounds more 'finished' than a lot of the album. The lyrics talk about
'another season where I will sit and grieve' and time spent in slumber and
daydreams 'weary of heart, weary of soul weary of mind'. However the mood is
quite upbeat too, with a lovely counter-melody from Isobel acting as Mark's
conscience and telling him that 'when you fall there'll be another star'.
Another album highlight.
The mournful 'Trouble' makes it three straight excellent songs in
a row, with Isobel and Mark wearily singing over a troubled minor key guitar,
pulsating bass and shuffling percussion how 'I haven't slept a day in years'
(did Isobel think of Stuart's m.e. years when she sang this?) The mood is
supportive once more though, one lost soul comforting another, with a lovely
last verse: 'When the world steals all hope from you, you wonder where your
dreams have gone to, you're the one I still belong to, listen why I love you'.
Finally, 'Sally Don't You Cry' is a bit of an anti-climax, another song
clearly meant to seem like a traditional folk song but that simply sounds
repetitive and doesn't really go anywhere. 'The times are hard when you
question why' sings Mark for what seems like the hundredth time on this album,
while Isobel's counter vocals don't actually work that well here.
Still, a good half of this album - mainly the
acoustic songs - works very well indeed and whilst 'Sunday At Devil Dirt'
doesn't quite have the consistency of 'Broken Seas' it might actually have the
greater highs as well as the lower troughs. The more folkish idiom, generally
speaking, works well across this album and Lanegan always sounds better when
there's less to distract you from his voice anyway, making it a shame that the
duo revert to the more electric and definitely eclectic sound of 'Hawk' next.
That album, like this one, is an album of peaks and troughs too but is perhaps
minutely more consistent than this one. Still, even if 'Devil Dirt' is the
weakest of Mark and Isobel's trio it's still a riveting listen, full of
remarkable performances on songs of doom and disaster and the human condition
that seems a mile away from the first Gentle Waves album. Isobel should feel
very proud.
"Introducing...Belle
and Sebastian" (EP)
(Jeepster, May 27th 2008)
The Boy With
The Arab Strap/Expectations/Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying/Women's
Realm/Jonathan David
"Hey, you're being used! Write a
song, I'll sing along..."
To date, Belle and Sebastian have never released a
best-of. Good for them: there are so many gems in their back catalogue that I
wouldn't know where to start. All I can tell you is that this CD EP - thrown
together in a hurry by Jeepster when they were in a bit of financial trouble -
isn't really any fan's idea of a 'best of'. There's one song apiece from each
of the first four albums, plus the 'Jonathan David' single, seemingly plucked
at random: there's no 'State I Am In' 'Mary Jo' 'Dog On Wheels' 'Lazy Line Painter Jane' 'The
Boy Done Wrong Again' 'Dylan In The Movies' 'Fox In The Snow' 'The Stars Of Track And Field' 'Me and the
Major' 'Wandering Alone' 'Legal Man'... (not necessarily the best Belle and
Sebastian, you understand, but popular or high-selling songs that the general
public might be more likely to know). The EP doesn't even contain these said
songs in the proper order. As for the cover, only Stevie is shown and to be
honest there are better pictures around (it would have been more 'traditional'
to not have the band there anyway...)
"The
BBC Sessions"
(Jeepster, November 18th 2008)
The State I
Am In (July 1996)/Like Dylan In The Movies (July 1996)/Judy And The Dream Of
Horses (July 1996)/The Stars of Track and Field (July 1996)/I Could Be Dreaming
(December 1996)/Seymour Stein (July 1997)/Lazy Line Painter Jane (July
1997)/Sleep The Clock Around (July 1997)/Slow Graffiti (July 1997)/Wrong Love
aka The Wrong Girl (July 1997)/Shoot The Sexual Athlete (May 2001)/The Magic Of
A Kind Word (May 2001)/Nothing In The Silence (May 2001)/(My Girl's Got)
Miraculous Technique (May 2001)
(The deluxe
edition of the album included a 'bonus' disc 'Live In Belfast'; to read our
thoughts on that please see the entry under '2001' in this book!)
"Hey! Cut me loose! Now I'm
feeling fine!"
Review #1, to be sung with gusto: I was surprised,
I was happy for a day in 2008. I was puzzled by a dream that Belle and
Sebastian's BBC radio sessions were coming out - I didn't even know they'd done
that many and I couldn't wait. But the recordings were made in a rush to save a
radio from transmitting silence, so they weren't exactly loved. Although I was
touched, I was moved that they had removed the crutches from my musical
friends. But I was not impressed, they didn't sound as good as the records I had
to confess. But I still got myself to HMV to see if they had it - although
there was a pregnant pause before I said 'ok'. Now I'm feeling dangerous;
reviewing BBC re-recordings of classics only ever designed to be heard once is
sad. They gave themselves to sin and gave themselves to providence and still I
kept going back again - oh the state these sessions were in! But I gave in to
sin and kept coming back, oh yeah...
Review #2, to be spoken with a tinge of sadness:
Not many bands adapt to radio that well - a kind of live performance with the
concert removed so that a band's many mistakes and problems are laid bare for
the world to see. Part of the huge fuss behind the 'Beatles at the Beeb' box
set in 1993 was that the fab four somehow managed to sound as good playing live
without overdubs for a group of bored middle-aged engineers as they did on
their early records. Unfortunately that set the bar very high for every act
that's followed - and if even bands as great live as The Kinks, The Who and The
Hollies have struggled by comparison, a band as notoriously unrehearsed and
scrappy as Belle and Sebastian have no chance. If you could somehow forget that
the studio records existed or were unlucky enough never to have heard of Belle
and Sebastian at all then, yes, I can see why these ok recordings of some truly
fabulous material might make you sit up and listen. But a real test of these
BBC compilations is to see if any of the alternative arrangements improve on
any of the songs or whether any of the rawer edges make a particular song more
enjoyable.
I can't honestly say any of the 10 re-recordings
here do, with the only one that's particularly different ('Lazy Jane' as it's titled
here, an attempt to re-record 'Lazy Line Painter Jane' without Monica Queen')
is hopeless: Stuart and Stevie take on all the vocals, slow the tempo to a
crawl and someone (Chris? Isobel?) taps an irritating glockenspiel part over
the top. It's as if one of the greatest multi-layered kitchen sink dramas of
all time has just been re-cast...as a children's cartoon (and not a good one
like Dogtanion or Mysterious Cities of Gold, either, but an American one
stapled together from doodles). Worse still is a punkish attempt to re-cut 'I
Could Be Dreaming' as an early 80s Smiths song: I always thought a song that
clever and poignant could survive anything. I was wrong. 'Seymour Stein', here
even slower than on 'Arab Strap', sounds drunk. While an awkward 'Judy And The
Dream Of Horses' made me reach for the bottle - and I don't drink (or didn't
till hearing that version). A jumpy 'Sleep The Clock Around', meanwhile, might
have been better if everybody had hit the bottle, being played way too fast
(although the extended jam session ending is surprisingly good, until they fade
it). The closest any song here comes to 'improving' is a sad and slow 'Slow
Graffiti' and even that is close-enough to the original for most fans' ears. What's
odd is that, despite the band's reputation as 'enthusiastic bumblers' live, it
shouldn't be like this: the ten-track 'Tigermilk' was recorded in three
fantastic days; the 14 poor performances here took place over five. What's more
there's a great mini-concert made for French television in 1998 (see our
'unreleased tracks' section) that while a little rough in places is exciting
and fun. Were the surroundings at the BBC really that scary, every time?
If the re-recordings don't work, then, how about
the compilations' big talking point: four new songs, unheard on album and
transmitted live only once for a John Peel show on June 24th 2001. Well, we've
dealt with them in more detail in our 'non-album songs' section coming up but
none of these are exactly essential either: 'Shoot The Sexual Athletes' is a
curiously unmelodic song about roadies that's too sarcastic to sound like a
genuine tribute; Isobel's 'The Magic Of A Kind Word' is the best of a bad bunch
with a sad opening and a fun funky chorus but even this sounds like a spoof
Belle and Sebastian song made up of parts people might expect to hear; 'Nothing
In The Silence' has Isobel and Sarah singing a typically slow and sad song, but
she's written better sad and slow songs; finally, '(My Girl's Got) Miraculous
Technique' is a curiously low-fi recording of a Stuart Murdoch song that could
have been something special but here sounds unfinished and unremarkable. All
four songs are bonuses for fans, true, and it's better that they should find
release somewhere than be doomed to rust away in a vault somewhere, but by
Belle and Sebastian's high standards this isn't a gift for fans, just a bit of
recycling.
Thank goodness, then, for the album packaging.
There are lyrics for everything - even the otherwise unreleased songs. There
are details about when each of these songs were broadcast (five in 1996, four
in 1997, one in 1998 and four in 2001, so this is largely prime vintage B and S,
although sadly there's no room for a reportedly superior 1996 session featuring
'We Rule The School' 'Seeing Other People' and 'This Is Just A Modern Rock
Song' and a second John Peel session in 2002 I know was superior to this one
because I actually heard it). There are unpublished photos: lots of lovely
relevant photos of the band at work in a clearly alien environment including
Stevie waiting on the steps to the audio-booth waiting for playback and Stuart
Murdoch pretending to be asleep on the floor. Isobel gets only her second
appearance on the front of a B and S project (and unlike 'Legal Man' she's on
her own), curled up in a child's paddling pool (to get the right 'echo', you see). Many fans were
surprised at this - after all, Isobel had left the band a full six years
earlier - but actually it makes sense; Isobel always had much more to do with
the band live than on the records anyway and gets a nice lot to do here, with
two lead vocals to her name and lots of cello parts and harmony vocals. The
other stars are Stevie, whose reverb-filled guitar comes to the rescue of many
a lacklustre performance with a storming solo or a sympathetic vocal and Mick
Cooke, whose unflappable trumpet parts are the one element that sounds as tight
and professional as on the records. Perhaps, then, the best thing about the BBC
set is that - in the absence of all but two live albums, neither of them
straightforward re-creations of a full B and S gig (the first of these released
in a 'deluxe' re-issue of this BBC set) - it proves once and for all that Belle
and Sebastian are a band, not just a few friends surrounding Stuart Murdoch.
In short, buy this set if you're a completist. Buy
it if you really really have to hear what those four 'missing' songs sound
like. Buy it if you've played each Belle and Sebastian so many times over that
any alternate version of the songs, however bad, would still be of interest. Buy
it if you want to hear what on earth 'Lazy Line Painter Jane' could sound like
without Monica Queen to sing on it. Buy it if you want to hear how terrible
even one of the world's greatest bands can sound like on a bad night (or nights).
Buy it if you like pictures of Isobel Campbell sitting in paddling pools. But
don't buy it if you're a casual fan after a 'highlights' set or someone who
doesn't already own at least the first four band albums and three EPs. Belle
and Sebastian really do sound better in the studio than they do on stage, by
and large, and here is some very unwelcome proof. All that said, I do keep
coming back to this album again and again, oh yeah. I'm not quite sure why...
God Help The Girl:
1) "Come Monday Night"
(Single, Rough Trade, May 11th 2009)
Come Monday Night/Howard Jones Is My Mozart
2) "God Help The Girl"
(Album, Rough Trade, June 22nd 2009)
Act Of The Apostle/God Help The Girl/Pretty Eve In The Tub/A
Unified Theory/Hiding 'Neath My Umbrella/Funny Little Frog/If You Could
Speak/Musician Please Take Heed/Perfection As A Hipster/Come Monday Night/Music
Room Window/I Just Want Your Jeans/I'll Have To Dance With Cassie/A Down and
Dusky Blonde
3)
"Funny Little Frog"
(Single,
Rough Trade, July 31st 2009)
Funny Little Frog/Mary's Market
4)
"Stills"
(EP,
Rough Trade, November 3rd 2009)
I'm In Love With The City/He's A Loving Kind Of
Boy/Stills/Baby's Just Waiting/The Psychiatrist Is In
5)
"Baby, You're Blind"
(Single,
Rough Trade, May 24th 2010)
Baby, You're Blind/A Down and Dusky Blonde
"God help the girl - she needs all the help she can
get"
When Stuart Murdoch started to gather together his
latest songs for what became the 'Life Pursuit' album he found he had a
problem: all he could hear in his head was a group of female singers Motown
style. Putting the songs to one side, he realised that they told a story (along
with a couple of songs he wished he'd kept from 'Pursuit', re-recorded for this
album) but it wasn't a story he could tell with the band: well, not in the lead
roles anyway; he needed new singers, preferably female and preferably young to
fit the 'characters' he'd unknowingly been writing for. Now, to some extent
this is nothing new: the best songs on 'Tigermilk' and 'Sinister' have Murdoch
as a kind of omnipotent narrator, sympathising with a string of mixed up,
vulnerable-yet-strong teenage and early-twenty-something females going through a
rough patch and trying to make their mark on the world. But ever since Isobel
stopped being a muse and turned into a human being (circa 'Arab Strap') and
ever since Stuart recovered from his illness and found himself back in a world
he'd last seen in his teens, Murdoch has found it harder and harder to compose
'songs' for these sorts of characters. Every Belle and Sebastian album since
the third one have, to some extent, been clever and increasingly desperate ways
to get around this fact (ignoring the problem and getting the rest of the band
to write - 'Storytelling'; revisiting old friends one last time - 'Dear
Catastrophe Waitress' and recording songs about the break-up - parts of 'The
Life Pursuit'), all of which worked well as one-offs but didn't really point
the way towards the future.
Somehow, though, without really meaning to, he's
hit on the solution: 'God Help The Girl' is an all 'new' project (give or take
a couple of recycled songs), untainted by the part it plays in the Belle and
Sebastian love story, even though all of the 2009 line-up of Belle and
Sebastian play throughout (and play very well, with Chris on keyboards and
Stevie on guitar especially sounding like they're loving every minute of the
new challenge). Suddenly it's as if we've gone back in time 15 years: Murdoch
is now back in his element, shedding the need to be 'honest' that he's pursued
over the past few albums rounding off the 'Belle and Sebastian' love story and
merely trying to 'connect' with the audience he reached out to in 1995:
confused, emotional, brittle yet feisty girls who have the weight out of the
world on their shoulders. Many of the lyrics on 'God Help The Girl' are the
best Stuart has written in years: poignant, troubled and poetic, songs that
once again read just as well as poems in miniature as lyrics designed to
accompany songs. Suddenly 'White Collar Boy' and the like seem like a bad
dream.
Murdoch occasionally sings, in his familiar role as
kind of 'overseer', but the majority of the album is sung by two 'new' singers
'discovered' for the project and playing two similar but separate characters:
Catherine Ireton and Anna Miles. Stuart held a kind of Scottish run-down
equivalent of 'X factor' to find his singers, but his lead role actually came
closer to home. Ireton, once the vocalist with Irish band Elephant, had first
met Murdoch in 2005 through a mutual friend of that band's guitarist Michael
McCarthy and had initially wanted her as a sort-of 'second singer' for the band
alongside Sarah (although the closest she got was appearing on the sleeve for
the 'White Collar Boy' single). Murdoch has reportedly been kicking himself
ever since for not 'connecting' his friend with the voice in his head sooner.
Anna came through the auditions a more traditional way, along with 'Funny
Little Frog' vocalists Brittany Stallings and Dina Bankole who were among 400
Scottish fans who responded to a similar competition advertised in a local
Glasgow magazine.
The story back-drop to the songs takes us right
back to where we came in in this book and sounds remarkably close to the real
lives of both Stuart and Isobel. Ireton plays the main role of 'Eve', a
struggling student who drops out of college gets a job she hates and dreams
about becoming a singer-songwriter. She's also on the run from a psychiatrist
board who want to keep her away from her 'life' and friends which she resents
because she doesn't want to 'miss out' on life's experiences, however bad (something
Murdoch has admitted at the film premiere in 2014 was very much based on his
time spent suffering from m.e. 'but a film about m.e. would be the most boring
film in the world' with lots of shots of Eve sleeping and not much else). To
quote from film producer Barry Mendel on the 'God Help The Girl' website: 'It's
a simple story about the brief moment after you've realised what you want to do
with your life, before your dream settles into becoming your job, when you're
filled with enthusiasm, meeting like-minded friends and the possibilities are
endless'. Given the plotline of suffering and dead-ends, the music is
remarkably upbeat (even more so than the early B and S albums, with hope
'around the corner' rather than some point in the future), though there's still
plenty of room for Murdoch's wry turns of phrase (the title track tries to set
out the plot and Eve's loneliness but interrupts it with a 'please stop me
there - I'm even boring myself'). Dare I say it, as a collection of songs this
is Murdoch's strongest work since at least 2001, possibly 1998, with Murdoch
going back to conjuring up characters and situations in a few tragi-comedy
lines that manages to be both highly believable and highly quotable. Best of
all, he sounds like he's having 'fun' again, after so many years of reflecting
where the love story went 'wrong' and ironically - given that the band are
hardly here and get only the smallest of credits on the packaging - it might
just have given Belle and Sebastian a new lease of life.
All the vocalists are strong and powerful,
noticeably different to Isobel's traditionally light vocals, which is great news
for the music business as a whole (all have strong futures) but rather makes a
mockery of the more vulnerable lyrics of Murdoch's songs: the tough-ness we're
used to hearing is there, but not always the layers of hurt and vulnerability
we're used to hearing. I understand why it's there, but a gentler voice that
can still resort to toughness might be better (the 1964-model Lulu would have
been perfect - she even shares a Glaswegian accent!) The backing, while
understandably and impressively removed from the average B and S sound, also
doesn't have the same distinctive appeal across a whole album and lacks the
shades of all of Murdoch's other projects to date. Despite everything we'd been
hearing in the press about 'Motown' and 'girl bands' it's simply a tougher,
grittier update of the usual B and S sound, like most of 'The Life Pursuit' had
been but without the sudden 'surprises' (that goes double for the two songs
we'd already heard on that album: 'Act Of The Apostle' and 'Funny Little Frog',
which sound menacing here rather than cute as before). I for one would also
have preferred to have heard B and S themselves sing this album, perhaps with
Sarah taking on more of a role and with allowances made for Stuart finding his
inner teenage girl: despite the new settings and new characters it's not
entirely unimaginable to hear Murdoch sing these songs (especially project
highlight 'Stills', which is the lovely poignant closing ballad 'If You're
Feeling Sinister' was missing).
To some extent, though, that doesn't matter. 'God
Help The Girl' isn't an album to hear from beginning to end in one sitting:
that might be one of the reasons the music for it has been spread across so
many sittings. Instead this is an album to savour, to experience at interludes;
to come up on 'shuffle' every so often and take you by surprise. With such a
loose story-line (at the moment anyway - at the time of writing the film still
isn't out) 'God Help The Girl' feels less like a musical you have to listen to
in order and more like a compilation of songs on a theme: the kind of thing B
and S had done on their 'Late Night Tales' sets. To date there have been six variants
of the project: three singles, an album, an EP and most recently of all a film
(which, if it ever comes out after five years in the works, we hope to review
separately in this book somewhere) The music though - sometimes unique to each
release, sometimes released alongside the album - will be reviewed here in the
order it came out, so please forgive us if we have to shuffle around the list
we came up with above:
'Come Monday
Night' was the first single taken
from the album and despite appearing somewhere in the middle sounds like an
'overture' for the project, the two characters' voices circling round each
other in wordless harmony. This is a song about escaping 'the looming grey of ordinariness'
that hits us all on Monday night, with so much of the week still left to go and
a disappointing weekend still playing on our minds. A simple song with a
flowing melody is really helped by an excellent string arrangement and a new
sound for B and S: an accordion!
The B-side, not included on the LP, is the wittily
titled 'Howard Jones Is My
Mozart'. The track is a monologue (Stuart David would be proud!) and
seems to be placed in the 'plot' where Eve is released into the wide world from
her psychiatric ward, 'a blank slate': 'In the past I expected the worst to
happen, perhaps I still think the worst will happen, but what if it doesn't
happen? What if I'm free?' Unsurprisingly music is her route to salvation: Eve
has a CD one of her nurses did for her and she plays it, 'like a starving
person tasting food for the first time'. She passes over Bill Withers and
Jackson Browne though in favour of Howard Jones whose voice is like 'buttered
toast' (don't tell him I said that!) This song really should have made the
album as it tells is more about Eve in a song than the whole of the album did and features some of
Murdoch's cleverest character writing yet! Kim Moore 'is' Eve just for this one
song and while she never actually sings she 'gets' the part very well indeed.
'Act Of The
Apostle' is the song we first heard on
'The Life Pursuit', although only the first not second instalment of the track
is here. Murdoch has re-arranged the song from straight pop into bluesy jazz
which doesn't always work and Ireton doesn't quire have Murdoch's likeability
as the religious studies pupil with deeper things on her mind. The song is a
good one though and still my favourite from the 'Pursuit' album, even if this
slower version doesn't have quite the same pathos.
'God Help The
Girl' itself is a bright and cheery
song that comes the closest to Murdoch's original idea of a 'girl band': it's
the sort of thing the Shirelles would have done well in the 1960s. Eve is in
adamant that she's not 'looking for a boyfriend' but in truth she's 'born to be
contrary' and contradicts herself happily throughout the song ('If he gave me a
sign...I'd think about it for a week I'd build it up - and then I'd turn it
down!') Note all the references to sleeping: was this draft of Eve still meant
to have m.e. like Stuart did?
'Pretty Eve In
The Tub' features Murdoch singing a
jolly little ditty that could have come straight out of the inter-war period
and finds the singer accompanied only by a very 'proper' string quartet. The
effect is delightful, Murdoch playing the role of her partner (although at
times he's more like her parent), half-exasperated, half-loving of his awkward
loved one, who 'came onto the scene like an energetic beam' but now lies
comatose, with a face 'crumpled and creased from the way that you sleep'. The
melody is one of Murdoch's best and the unusual backing works surprisingly
well.
'A Unified
Theory' is a moody jazz instrumental
dominated by Bobby's upright bass, Stevie's guitar and Richard's busy drums.
The piece shows off a new side to Belle and Sebastian but is too slight really
to get a hold of and sounds out of place here 9what's happening in the plot?
Has Eve gone to a jazz club?!If so she'll be back in the psychiatric ward in no
time...
'Hiding 'Neath
My Umbrella'
has Stuart and Catherine trading lines over a moody piano riff that sounds
remarkably like one of Cat Stevens'. The lyrics are just so B and S even if
they're telling a different story, with Murdoch's male lead 'hiding' behind his
ordinariness ('Don't commit to love and don't commit a crime') and Eve
daydreaming about 'passionate thrills that are a waste of your time'. The pair
of characters bump into each other and decide to give love a go, putting down
their umbrellas with the feel that 'the weather may be changing'. A sweet song
that's the one song here that does sound as if it belongs in a musical.
The 'God Help The Girl' version of 'Funny Little Frog' is more
contemporary than Belle and Sebastian's version and lacks the swing and lovable
vulnerability of Murdoch's version. The strings are a neat touch though and
Brittany Stallings does a good job on a song that must have been hard to pull
off, leaping from desperation to gentle put-down from verse to verse. I could
have done without the twee instrumental passage though, which sounds like it
belongs on a Michael Jackson album.
'If You Could
Speak' is one of the better songs on
the album, sung simply by Ireton to a strummed acoustic guitar. Murdoch's back
to writing about dogs again on a song that must surely have a touch of Isobel
in the character of Eve here: she's leapt out of bed, shoeless, to walk round
the park and 'look for adventure' (see the B and S DVD 'For Fans Only', where
she does just that, plus shoes it has to be said), to find her only companion
of the day is a friendly dog. However she ends the day still adventure-less,
with 'no breakfast, no kindness, no games'.
'Musician Please
Take Heed' might well be the best song here though,
taking the refrain of the title track but slowing it down and adding the
tension. Eve's 'temporary' friends are all out enjoying themselves when she
gets out of hospital, leaving her with a soundtrack she picked with 'immaculate
care' but no holiday (by now Eve's mental state is inexplicably connected to
the music she plays and she sighs 'such a lot rests upon it, my life upon a
song'. Let's hope she doesn't play Looper's 'The Snare' anytime soon or she'll
be back in hospital again sharpish...) Spurned, she knows she should be
studying but decides to write a letter instead: a long rambling letter where 'a
gift of improvising removes me from revising'. By the end, exhausted, she 'does
what she must' to get through another lonely night: she buys a leotard and goes
to the gym, talks about taking some hallucinogenics but ultimately ends up
asleep in front of the TV watching a repeat of an old 'Minder' episode. Such is
life.
'Perfection As A
Hipster' is a really curious song.
Murdoch's writi9ng in the third persona gain, describing how the pair of lovers
in the story get together, but he gives the song to Divine Comedy singer Neil
Hannon to sing instead of himself. Adding yet another voice to proceedings this
late on is an odd move and Hannon's operatic style doesn't really fit (why
couldn't Stevie sing this part?!), while Murdoch has written better songs about
two shy and insecure people meeting each other. Note yet more references to
'sleeping'.
'Come Monday Night' would be here on the LP but
we've dealt with that so next up is another instrumental, 'Music Room Window'. Goodness
knows how this links up to the story: a long-held string note blossoms into a
lovely mournful orchestral eulogy that lasts barely a minute but is still one
of the best things on the album. This piece really gives Murdoch a chance to
show his strong capacity for chords and keys that tug at the emotions, although
this badly needs to become a 'full' song.
Asya (vocalist with the band Smooth) sings lead now
on the track 'I Just Want Your
Jeans' and might well be the best of the singers on this album (Murdoch
aside). Having just moved to a new area the singer hated it at first but has
now come to embrace her anonymity and 'freedom'. 'My room faces North but the
sun's is the South' is one of Murdoch's cleverest used of one of his favourite
metaphors, summing up someone at odds with the world in the opening couplet.
Another of the album's better songs.
Catherine is back for 'I'll Have To Dance With Cassie', another song that
wouldn't be out of place in the roaring twenties or thirties for the first
half. Eve is meeting boys at a party but is reading too much into their
behaviour offering her a drink and so on and her 'dream boy' never asks for a
dance so she simply gets up on the dance floor with party girl Cassie. Murdoch's
eye for detail is rarely better but this song lacks the strong melodic hooks of
most of the album.
'A Down and
Dusky Blonde'
is the most B and S sounding track here, complete with 'reverb' guitar from
Stevie and a slow and sad melody that sounds as if it's crying buckets of
tears. Eve has turned to her love once again but isn't quite herself: she
curses him for looking his age before asking 'please make allowances for me'.
Caught up with art and books and everything the human mind can be, Eve has
neglected herself and is visited by a doctor who warns her 'man cannot live by
word alone'. Confined to her room (on a hospital ward?) time passes by
differently, 'like trick photography', with something else in charge of Eve's
body 'although I kept my soul' and Eve's world of endless possibilities slowly
shrinking until she can only think about the room she's confided in (making
this the single most m.e. based song Murdoch has written since 1995). The
saddest song on the record finally gives Catherine a song of depth and emotion
to get her teeth into and is easily her best vocal on the album, although all
the vocalists here get one line or another, as if all five characters visited
across the record and hoping for utopia are now here: trapped in a room without
any knowledge of how to escape.
B-side 'Mary's Market' and features Murdoch on lead again on a song that
seems to follow on directly from the last song. Eve is still in hospital,
listing everything she wants and misses (the feel of the wind in June, a walk
down to the harbour, to be able to play the guitar, a 'saintly cellmate'). A
friend comes round, plays 'an 80s box set I hadn't heard', cooks a dinner 'I
never ate' and then leaves, 'making a still life out of nothing'. Another song
surely written from Stuart's experiences with m.e. and living life separately
to those around him, the song ends poignantly 'I want a song that kills me' - in
both the sense of achieving something and from not having to do this sort of
thing anymore. There's less of a tune here than usual but a very clever use of
playing cat-and-mouse with the tension in the song. The track easily deserved
to make the album.
'I'm In Love
With The City'
is a finger-snapping 'West Wide Story' style song about a love affair Eve knows
will never work - because he's already got a 'lifelong partner' and it isn't
her. A surprisingly slinky and sultry backing (with some excellent Mick Cooke
horn parts) is the highlight of a song that tries to have it both ways - Eve
decides she 'loves' him too much to break up two people who are happy, before
ominously deciding she's only 'got a cat's chance in hell - I'd better take
it!' The track was included on the 'Stills' EP.
'He's A Loving
Kind Of Boy'
is clearly a demo, with Murdoch singing lead even though he's obviously playing
Eve and debating whether to take up with her lover or not. Basically he's
sweet, 'knocking a chop off his shoulder' every day but not tough enough: he
'goes to church every day' and will try and drown himself in the bath if he
thinks he's done her 'wrong'. The backing of swirling strings and mariachi
horns is again unusual and not altogether successful. Another track from the
'Stills' EP.
So far the EP hasn't been up to the album, but the
title track 'Stills'
puts that right with perhaps the most exquisite single song of the project so
far. Murdoch's typically mournful yet beautiful melody is accompanied by a
gentle lyric that finds Eve bidding a mournful goodbye to her lover from a
distance ('I've been banned' she sings, although whether that's true or only in
her head is unknown for now - she compares being unable to say his name to 'a
place in Russia in the 70s'). 'I'm writing a song and getting a lot of work
done' she sings, before admitting she's still 'smoking two packs a day' and not
looking after herself. You wonder whether Murdoch wrote this tender
love-song-with-a-twist after a chance meeting with Isobel (whose paths often
crossed with B and S in this period, especially at one of the band-curated
festivals, where they often sent invites to Isobel) - once again it sounds very
'real' this song and is better yet than band song 'Read The Blessed Pages' from
a year later. Alex Klobouk takes the lead on this one and is another excellent
find, hitting the notes of vulnerable toughness spot on - she even sounds a
little like Isobel at times.
'Baby's Just
Waiting' is another EP track with
Celia Garcia on lead vocal this time and returns to the 50s style of some of
the album, complete with Richard Colburn playing his drum kit with 'brushes'.
Another song of waiting for something to happen which never comes, this song
recalls how suffering '20 years of education' has resulted in '20 years of
incarceration and 20 of elucidation'. By now Eve is so out of touch with modern
culture she feels even more isolated and out of touch - although her lifestyle
of watching I Love Lucy re-runs and dressing from the 1950s sounds quite normal
to me.
Final EP track 'The Psychiatrist Is In' is even more unusual: a
bossa nova percussion-and-guitar instrumental, this is clearly more 'mood
music' from the film (given the title presumably near the beginning when people
first start to suspect Eve is having problems). Fun but inconsequential, this
would have been a nice song with lyrics attached and makes for an unusual close
to this section.
We'll be picking up the 'God Help The Girl' story when
the film comes out in 2014: till then, Murdoch's project is a crucial part of
the Belle and Sebastian story, far from perfect and full of filler but actually
a more credible cornerstone of the B and S story than either of the two band
albums around it. While flawed, you can see why the project got so under its
creator's skin (to the point where it's become five years' work and counting)
and the central plot about becoming cut off from a life that once promised so
much is a logical conclusion for a writer whose been dabbling with the subject
ever since 'It Could Have Been A brilliant Career'. The themes of isolation,
desperation and hope really do bring out the best in Murdoch and the return to
his own past via the characters in the story enable him to tell us things that
are clearly highly personal and deeply moving. Like many a B and S album,
though, the distractions and cameos take away too much from the central story
and there's arguably a third too much material here, spread across the various
releases. Still, at its best 'God Help The Girl' is moving, courageous and
extremely promising in terms of writing, if not always performance. Let's hope
that, even with the film to come, this isn't the last we hear of this
project...
Non-Album Recordings:
Stuart Murdoch (2009):
A) That isn't
quite the end of Stuart Murdoch's spin-off entries in this book, however. The
year 2009 also saw him release a solo recording of the otherwise unreleased
song 'Another Saturday'
for various artists 'AIDS' charity album 'Dark Was The Night' (actually the
20th album released to raise money and awareness for Aids sufferers as part of
the long-running 'Red Hot Aids Benefit Series'. The track is a lovely folky
song that's almost a sea shanty, with a melody taken almost verbatim from old
folk song 'Wild Mountain Thyme' (the one the Byrds sing on their '5D' album).
The mood is warm and optimistic, quite unlike anything else in his canon,
asking us to 'be good to the one that's near and bow down to those in wanting'
, before telling us to 'look ahead with hope and cheer' because we wouldn't be
given a load this heavy to carry if someone upstairs didn't think we'd be able
to 'bear' it. A fascinating glimpse into Stuart as a peddler of Christian
songs, it's nice to hear him doing something so different to his usual style
and he sounds like quite a different person: confident, joyous and in his
element. Belle and Sebastian albums would benefit from more songs like this
one. Find it on: Various Artists album 'Dark Was The
Night' (2009)
Isobel
Campbell: "Hawk"
(V2 Records, August 24th 2010)
We Die and
See Beauty Reign/You Won't Let Me Down Again/Snake Song/Come Undone/No Place To
Fall/Get Behind Me/Time Of The Season/Hawk/Sunrise/To Hell and Back Again/Cool
Water/Eyes Of Green/Lately
Deluxe
Edition Bonus Track: Won't Be Sorry
"Both eyes on the road ahead,
don't want to look behind"
A 'hawk' isn't exactly a bird of peace, but this
third collaboration between Isobel and Mark does find Campbell finally
achieving a state of 'peace'. While the album still contains, stings, barbs and
the feeling of a 'Western' in places, it's the point at the end of the film
where the cowboy is looking at all the dead bodies strewn back across his path
and vowing 'never again' rather than looking for revenge. On the negative side,
this means there's a touch less emotion and autobiography in the lyrics this
time, with the sudden switches of pace and pathos that are becoming the duo's
stock in trade drastically reduced this time around. On the plus side, Mark
sounds much more comfortable with the idea and is actually a better vocalist
now that he's conveying weary resignation rather than torture, with his voice
an even better foil for Isobel's gentle harmonies this time around. Like 'Devil
Dirt' this album was recorded more or less eyeball-to-eyeball and the pair have
got to know each other pretty well by now - ironically they're beginning to
sound like a telepathic married couple just at the point where Campbell is
moving on from writing songs about married couples.
It's good, though, that the pair end their albums
here, just at the point where Campbell is beginning to find subjects to sing
about other than 'goodbye'. There are hardly references to bad exes (whether
Stuart Murdoch or anyone else) and while there are still songs about heartbreak
and bad luck, you sense that Campbell is having a happier time. While V2
clearly didn't think so, Campbell had managed quite an achievement with these
three albums, going from a dismissed 'twee' indie pop singer who didn't do much
expect inspire a few characters to a masterful writer, singer and arranger.
While 'Hawk' is probably the least successful of the three 'Mark Lanegan'
albums in pure artistic terms - being less intense and revealing - it is
probably her most eclectic moment, really showing off just how far she's come
and what she can do; they even have time to alter the settings a bit, branching
out to embrace a wordless (and tuneless) punk jam on the title track, a country
hoe-down(!) on 'Eyes of Green' and a
cover of Townes Van Zandt's acoustic rustic roots composition 'Snake Song' (the eerie highlight of the album). The sky's
the limit, in other words - so it's a shame that, at the time of writing, this
partnership seems to be over, with the duo dropped by V2 records - poor justice
for a record that actually managed to out-sell the first two, peaking at an
impressive #29 (once again higher than either of the first two Belle and
Sebastian albums). Our advice is if you're interested in the Belle and
Sebastian story (and hopefully you are, or you'll have found the last 200-odd
pages rather boring) then start with 'A Swansong For You' and 'Ballad Of The
Broken Seas'. If you're interested purely in Campbell and Lanegan, though, 'Hawk'
offers a wider range and more of a showcase as to what the pair can do.
'We Die And See
Beauty Reign'
is a lovely song co-written by Isobel and guitarist Jim McCulloch, which
doesn't so much flow as 'throb', held together with pulsating synthesiser notes
that do a good job at signifying a journey into the afterlife. Most singers
would end with this song, not start with it, but it makes for a striking
opening number, with perhaps one final 'goodbye' aimed at Murdoch's direction
('We fucked it up, forced the pace, got swept along, forged our fate')
'You Won't Let
Me Down Again'
is an angry acoustic foot-stomper and might well be my favourite track on the
album. Mark's lead vocal veers on the demented while Isobel occasionally sings
against and sometimes with him on an effective song about trust and betrayal
that interestingly enough given what happens has Lanegan screaming 'strength is
in the solitude I tried to obtain'.
'Snake Song' is the album's other gem: a
typically Van Zandt tale of being so slippery no one can put a label on the
crooked narrator ('Ain't no mercy in my smiling, only fangs and sweet
beguiling'). Jim McCulloch gets to show off more of his fine guitar skills on the
best 'Cowboy' sound Isobel has created yet.
'Come Undone' , however, sounds like
nothing less than one of those modern TV adverts: there's sweeping strings, a
plunked piano and emotion being poured out in
a very laidback, emotionless way. The narrator's only consolation after
a relationship goes wrong is that, on their deathbed, 'everyone will see that I
loved you the best' (eh? What's going to be revealed when the narrator dies,
then?) To be honest Mark sounds more at home than ever on this track, although
Isobel doesn't - which is odd seeing as she wrote it.
'No Place To
Fall' is a nice acoustic interlude
that - shock horror - features Lanegan singing high instead of his usual
gravelly tones. It's a little uncomfortable, actually, even if it suits a song
that for once features a happy Campbell pledging devotion to someone new: 'If
we help each other grow, when the light of day smiles down our way, we can't be
wrong'. That might be because it's another cover of a Van Zandt song rather
than one of Isobel's own.
'Get Behind Me' is a storming 50s-style retro
rocker that suggests the pair have been listening to a little too much White
Stripes (i.e. 'Get Behind Me, Satan'), which sounds a great idea for the
opening few seconds but sounds like a bad idea after five minutes of the same
repetitive whine. This is another song that asks for and offers support instead
of moaning about not having it as in the past.
'Time Of The
Season' is another experiment in
aural loveliness set on a Christmas Eve when the narrator's companion is a
hissing cat. Could that be a Murdoch reference in the lyrics? ('You know I've
been with dirty dogs (on wheels?) and kissed some frogs' (funny little ones?) -
all that's missing is the line 'snogged a fox' and we'd have the set) However
most of the lyrics seem to date further back than that, to a rubbish Christmas
temp job where two friends met, fell in love and never reconnected,
sound-tracked by 'that Christmas song by Boney M'. An unusual idea this, a
'story' rather than emotion fuelled song, and only a slight sense of
lifelessness in the backing stops this song being more of a success.
'Hawk' itself is an awful idea
though and the single worst thing on any Isobel Campbell record - neither Mark
nor Isobel appear on what's really just an excuse for the studio musicians to
go riot (although as Isobel gets the song credit it was probably based on her
slight 12 bar blues riff). The effect is like hearing the Elephant's Memory jam
from John and Yoko's 'Sometime In New York City' - an undisciplined cacophonous
1950s style jam with squealing saxophones that sounds as if it's never going to
end.
'Sunrise' sounds more like it, with
Isobel appearing more or less solo on a track that sounds musically and
lyrically like a sequel to her B and S song fittingly titled 'Waiting For The
Moon To Rise'. Isobel bemoans 'too much pain, too much pressure', but most of
the song has her eyes newly opened to a bright world of possibilities. Could
that be her sun-referencing ex Murdoch she's thinking of on the line 'I catch a
falling star and wonder where you are?'
'To Hell and
Back Again'
features Isobel taking the lead again on a whispery sort of song that finds her
world breaking apart, with the only comfort - uniquely - coming from religion
(was Isobel more influenced by Stuart in this respect than we'd ever realised?)
A lovely tune should have made for a great song but sadly there's no variety
here; if ever a song needed a middle eight (or even a chorus), it's this one!
'Cool Water' has Mark taking the lead for
a Johnny Cash style song about trying not to feel hard done by even when it's
raining hard and 'you're out grace'. There are some great lyrics here, full of
homespun wisdom: 'Take a cloth, wipe it off, see that? It's egg on your face'. This
song might be simple but it's very effective and one of the better tracks on
the album.
'Eyes Of Green' is a two minute Irish jig that's
quite unlike anything else this pair have ever down. Actually it works rather
well, with a nice fiddle part from Nina Violet, although the song needs to last
a bit longer to truly satisfy.
The original album then ends with 'Lately', which finally finds
the narrator happy and 'with direction under my feet', which comparing where we
started two albums earlier is a breakthrough indeed. Sadly it also sounds
rather artificial after all that angst and with guest vocalist Tisha Fredderick
and Makeda Francisco's soulful tones sounding very out of place on an album all
about quiet and space. Isobel doesn't appear either, which is a shame.
'Won't Be Sorry' - another acoustic song added as a 'bonus' on the iTunes
download of the album - acts as a more fitting farewell, with Mark angrily
telling us that he's nothing to be sorry for, even though the lyrics go on to
show how he murdered his yellow-haired lover 'by the banks of a river'. It's
not the best song on the album but it would have fitted in well on 'Broken
Seas' collection of folk tales and evil deeds and is as usual exquisitely
performed.
Overall, then, 'Hawk' isn't quite top notch but
it's good to hear Isobel and Mark trying to chop and change their trademarks
and experiment a bit across this album. Not all of these experiments come off,
but enough of them do to suggest a fourth album featuring this pair might be
truly special. Unfortunately, however, the time seems to have passed, with Mark
going back to his solo career (with 2012's all-original 'Blues Funeral' and
2013's covers album 'Imitations') and Isobel keeping unusually quiet for the
moment...
Stevie
Jackson: "(I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson"
(Rough Trade, 'November' 2011)
Pure Of
Heart/Just, Just So To The Point/Try Me/Richie Now/Dead Man's Fall/Bird's Eye
View/Man Of God/Kurosowa/Where Do All The Good Girls Go?/Telephone Song/Press Send/Feel
The Morning
"It's not as though I need
someone..."
Stevie's first solo album - including the clever
Rolling Stones referencing title - was being planned before he joined his first
band The Moondials, never mind Belle and Sebastian and made good use of the
large crop of songs he'd been busy building over the past few years and
couldn't place on a band album. The title, in fact, dates back to his teenage
years, although sadly he's not got round to using his childhood favourite
'Jackson Viking' yet (maybe next time...) Stevie
Jackson is a likeable chap and so is this album, with an encyclopaedic
knowledge of rock and roll even I can’t hope to match and this album features
as large an array of ideas, styles and emotions as you’d expect, with notably
more variety than the other B and S spin-off projects like Looper, Isobel and
God Help The Girl. The best of the songs here are also better than anything
that had been released under the band name since at least 2003, poignant,
revealing and sweet.
Sweet
is a word that might crop up a lot throughout this review. Stevie's narrator
might try too hard to look cool, act tough and get down with the boys but as
the best of this crop of songs have it his greatest weakness and greatest
strength is that he's 'pure of heart'. This album can be pretty much equally be
split in two between the 'experiments' that don't quite come off and the songs
that 'sound' like Stevie: weedy, needy and vulnerable - yet very sweet. 'Pure
Of Heart' is a great song about trying to be someone you're not and fooling no
one, closely followed by the delightful 'Richie Now', a Kinks like song about a
childhood friend whose changed immeasurably while you still feel the same
(Stevie's awe of his friend's Beatles collection - 'He talked of 'Rubber Soul'
and 'Wonderwall' - may well be the highlight of the entire set). 'Telephone
Song' meanwhile is a wonderful song in 'I'm Not In Love' mode: the narrator
tries hard to be cool and calm but his delight in a girl giving him her number
is fooling no one, no matter what he says. In all, that's three superb songs
that would give even the earliest and most perfect Stuart Murdoch songs a run
for their money and a welcome addition to any fans' Belle and Sebastian
collection. Had 'Write About Love' featured three of these songs instead of
that album's lesser moments (Stevie's 'I'm Not Living In The Real World' among
them) then I'd be talking about that record as a terrific return to form.
So,
end of review, everyone happy, next review? Not quite. Filling a whole album on
your own after decades with a band is a tall order (and one that even such big
AAA figures as Roger Waters, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards struggled with). Faced
with filling a whole album with similarly upbeat pop tunes and a record that
took a few chances, Stevie bravely went for the latter approach. But the sad truth
is that the 'weirder' material here (like the electronic 'Just, Just So To The
Point' which makes even 'Electric Renaissance' sound normal or the spoof 10cc
comedy email song 'Press Send') really doesn't come off. Hard as he tries,
Stevie should have taken his own advice and stayed 'pure of heart', scribbled
away another couple of songs and come up with the retro solo album of the
decade. One interesting variation of this is that Stevie plays pretty little
guitar throughout the album: instead the main sound of the album is piano, but
not Murdoch's 'twinkling' piano licks but a more structured, chordal sound (the
only other member of B and S to crop up regularly is Bobby Kildea, who plays
guitar rather than bass). There is plenty the 'reverb' that Stevie has become
famous for within and without the band and it works well, but it tends to be
placed on top of everything here, rather than just the guitar, giving the
majority of the song a '1960s' feel that works really well for an old-schooler
like me (by contrast Looper tend to stick to the 1980s and 'God Help The Girl' is 1950s, while Isobel's
work veers between the 1930s and the most contemporary of all the band). So, I
can't get no or I can't get away fast enough? The truth is a little of both.
Stevie might not have made a record as strong as the best of his parent band
and might not have made a record that matches Isobel's strongest work away from
the band, but he does prove what a great singer-songwriter he is away from
Stuart Murdoch's shadow, how lucky the band are to have him and how good a
second album made completely on the lines of this album's better songs and made
entirely 'pure of heart' would be one day.
'Pure Of Heart' is special indeed: a
young Stevie shyly fancies a girl but all he has to offer her is the 'mother's pride'
bread from his lunchbox. We then cover the years from 'boy to man, the awkward
stance, guitar chords and also rans' As Stevie dreams of glory, tries to act
like the rock star of his dreams and gets told basically 'why are you being so
silly? You're too pure of heart to act 'bad'. A lovely country-rock-ish backing
track, with some exceptional bass playing from Bill Wells and Stevie on pedal
steel, makes for one of the loveliest songs Stevie has written yet and easily
identifiable for all us musical nerds out there. Stevie says on his website
that he was inspired to write it after a band discussion about different
chords: Stevie's favourite is F Major (the key of this song), with all its
poignancy and wistfulness, although the song only came together when he
'pretended to sing it like Elton John'.
'Just, Just
So To The Point' is less interesting
somehow, a song written 'about' movie director John Huston (who directed The
Maltese Falcon and Moulin Rouge) apparently. Not that you'd know it from the
lyrics, although there is what seems to be a film set and someone called John .That
just sounds like an excuse to talk in 'hip speak' to me (Your naysayers don't
get your groovin' as you're reaching for
your elephant gun'), with the odd clever line ('Houston we don't have a
problem, Tom Hanks, no thanks' 'Get yourself a backbone - you ain't no
invertebrate!') Stevie sounds like he's having fun and this is the closest
we've yet come to a B and S rap song - but after the warm promise of the
opening track this just sounds clever rather than from the heart.
'Try Me'
features Sarah on organ and more of the B and S sound, a sort of swampy rocker
with heavy reverb (well, naturally) thought wouldn't have sounded out of place
on The Stones' 'Exile On Main Street'.
In fact Stevie's lyrics are pitched even earlier: 'I wish it was still 1964,
I'm still stuck in '63, maybe next year...' , before moving off to talk about
swans (as you do). The highlight is a blistering guitar solo from Bobby and a
nicely demented vocal from Stevie.
'Richie Now'
is a gorgeous song of childhood and growing up, basically re-telling Ray
Davies' 'Do You Remember, Walter?' with a childhood friend who used to be so
close but is now so far apart. I tell you, the mysterious 'Richie' (who also
crops up on B and S B-side 'Mr Richard') sounds like my kind of a friend too:
he owns every single Beatles song and with spends his lunch-times with Stevie
'playing guitars and dreaming of being stars' (at a time when the only one
Stevie owns is the 'Twist and Shout EP from 1963'). The difference here,
though, is that Stevie's childhood dreams came true and his friend's never did;
so here, in tribute, is the title that Richie once chose for a record ('Richie
Now') on an album titled after the idea a teenage Stevie came up with. Ahhh,
sweet. The song is more than just in-jokes, though, and will bring a lump to
the throat of anyone who 'never thought they'd grow old'.
'Dead Man's Fall' is a simple song about turning your life around and makes
reference to a slightly less happy childhood friendship ('Remember the time
that I fell? To you it meant nothing at all'). The mood is upbeat, though,
complete with 'doo bah bah' backing vocals and lyrics that talk about 'turning
round 180 degrees'.
'Bird's Eye View' is a sweet ballad for harpsichord and guitar commissioned for
but never used by a re-development project in Dunfermlene. Inspired by the idea
of taking a run-down patch of ground and turning it into luxury flats, Stevie
pours his hearts into the lyric which is full of hope and vigour and life: 'the
sun shines through the broken glass' 'lilac wallpaper hung with patience and
care'. Of course, Stevie wrote the song before he saw it finished when all
those wonderful ideas were thrown out in favour of doing the flats up 'cheap' -
as Stevie admits on his site, 'shoddily made', if well loved by those who live
in them. Stevie's friend Gray Thom gets the unique label credit on this song:
'bike', 'hitting' the wheels when the word 'bicycle' crops up on the lyric. Pretty.
'Man Of God'
is a collaboration between Stevie and friend Ray Moller, a simple song about
chatting up a girl at a party by looking cool (although, as Stevie's website
puts it, in reality 'the girl would soon get bored and leave as we'd end up
talking about Beatle B-sides or something'. The song is closer to Stuart's
later songs, actually, with its pleas to God and Moses as a girl gives the
narrator the closest he's ever felt to a 'religious experience'. There's
something slightly askew about this track, though, which doesn't quite connect
up and is one of the weaker on the album.
'Kurosawa'
features Stevie doing his deeper 'Johnny Cash' voice and inspired by his love
of Japanese films (Kurosawa directed 'Rushomo' and 'Seven Samurai' among many
many others), while a multi-part Mick Cooke trumpet section plays. I'm pleased
to say I 'guessed' that Stevie nicked the rhythm (or at least the cymbal part)
from one of my favourite Stones songs 'High and Dry' ('Aftermath' 1966), but
the overall feel is a little more modern than that.
'Where Did All The Good Girls Go?' is the oldest song Stevie's released yet: he started it when he
was 17 (so circa 1986) before finishing it for this album: a gestation period
of 25 years or so! The music is pure Kinks/Who 1965 riff-heavy rock, but the
lyrics and instrumental touches are more French, with references to French
stars who - luckily for the lyric - all rhyme with each other: 'Clemenceau'
'Victor Hugo' 'Juliette Greco' (what happened to Brigitte Bardot?) Stevie doesn't
say it on his website but I'm willing to bet this song was inspired by a
disappointing trip to Paris (perhaps on a B and S tour) where the 'city of
love' was found wanting.
'The Telephone Song' is another highlight, an orchestral epic that on the one hand
conveys Stevie's delight at finally getting a girl's telephone number and
trying to act 'cool' ('It's not as if I need someone...') and other a tribute
to music, his career giving him a direction and purpose he never had growing up
(the best imagery in the song: being chased through the rain with his band
members, 'like A hard Day's Night' - a true experience, apparently, although
Belle and Sebastian weren't actually being chased, just acting hysterical').
Stevie then ends the song deciding not to call her - he doesn't want to disturb
her doing something important, like 'playing her records, dreaming her wishes':
it's the having her number in his pocket that's important.
'Press Send'
is a modern version of the 'dear John' letter, Stevie's narrator accidentally
pressing 'send' on an 'e-mail to a female' he didn't mean to send. He wants her
to know he loves her, but is too afraid of rejection, while in a line that
makes the whole of the last song look suspect, he won't call her up on the
phone because 'talking's not my scene'. By the end he sends the e-mail anyway,
but knows 'it will get me a whole lot of bother'. A chirpy 50s-style 10cc
backing, with Chris Geddes now guesting on keyboards, is a little too quirky
though.
The
album ends with 'Feel The
Morning', a 'hymn to being alive' that features drummer Richard turning
up this time (making Stuart the only then-current member of B and S not to
appear). Alas this song tries a little too hard to offer up romantic imagery in
terms of moon and the stars etc and ends just when it gets going. It seems a
rather odd way for this album to end, without the originality of most of the
rest of the record.
Overall,
though, I can't get enough of 'I Can't Get No'. While a few tracks miss the
spot, the best of this album is on a par with any of the great Belle and
Sebastian records and as a whole is actually better than the last couple of
'band' LPs. I always felt Stevie has been overshadowed during his time with the
band and that there was a great LP in him if only he had the space to find it.
While this isn't quite up to being a 'great' LP, I still feel I was right and
that we deserve to see more of his songs on B and S records. I look forward
greatly to hearing 'Viking Jackson'
sometime in the future!...
"Belle
and Sebastian's Late Night Tales Volume II"
(Late Night Tales, March 26th 2012)
Ominous Cloud
(Broadcast)/Watch The Flowers Grow (The Wonder Who?)/A Time For Us (Joe
Pass)/Yekermo Sew - A Man Of Experience and Wisdom (Muluta Astatke)/Tudo Que
Voce Podia Ser (Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges)/Et Si Je T'aime (Marie
Laforet)/Bird Of Space (Bonnie Dobson)/Soul Vibrations (Dorothy
Ashby)/Tomorrow's People (McDonald and Giles)/ Quitters Raga (Gold Panda)/Chord
Simple (Broadcast)/Savage Sea (The Pop Group)/Starless and Bible Black (The
Stab Tracey Quartet)/Darlin' Be Home Soon (The Lovin' Spoonful)/Crash (Belle
and Sebastian)/LSD Partie (Ronald Vincent)/Still Sound (Toro Y Moi)/Rude Bwoy
Thug Life (Ce'cile)/Scottish Widows (Remember Remember)/Streets Of Derry
(Trees)/Spinning Wheel (Blood Sweat and Tears)/Homosapien (Dub) (Peter
Shelley)/Still Thinking Of You (Steve Parks)/On The Other Ocean (David
Behrman)/Lost For Words Part Three (Paul Morley)
"Ride a painted pony and let the
spinning wheel spin!"
Belle and Sebastian's second entry in the 'Late
Night Tales' series (the label's 27th entry in total, coming out between
compilations by MGMT and Tom Findlay of Groove Armada) is even more defiantly left-of-centre
than the first. Good luck if you recognise more than three of the names listed
above, which again contain an impressively eclectic mix of country and folk
with an emphasis on Spanish salsas. It's nice to hear some more by the
under-rated English rock group 'Trees' and Belle and Sebastian's natural taste
allows them to pick what is easily the best Lovin' Spoonful song, way better
than any of their more famous singles. However a lot of the rest is either
unusual, unmusical or usually both. At least Belle and Sebastian's choice of
exclusive cover is a lot better this time around, with the band choosing to
re-invent 1980s moody Primitives single 'Crash' as a singalong single. Murdoch
revels in the ability to sing nastily for once and - after his experience on
'God Help The Girl' made him re-live it - might be thinking about his m.e. days
when he chose the song. Either way, the vocal is one of his best, somewhere
between innocence and a good old cackle. Alas the CD packaging for this second
volume is a bit of a let down though, with what best can be described as a
'psychedelic leaf', which isn't a patch on the green umbrella of volume one.
Still, another handy compilation of songs that might otherwise have been lost -
our advice is to keep the skip button handy though!
"The
Third Eye Centre"
(Rough Trade, August 26th 2013)
I'm A Cuckoo
(Avalanches Remix)/Suicide Girl/Love On The March/Last Trip/Your Secrets/Your
Cover's Blown (Miaoux Miaoux Remix)/I Took A Long Hard Look/Heaven In The
Afternoon/Long Black Scarf/The Eighth Station Of The Cross Kebab House/I Didn't
See It Coming (Richard X Remix)/(I Believe In) Travellin' Light/Stop Look and
Listen/Passion Fruit/ Desperation Made A Fool Of Me/Blue Eyes Of A
Millionaire/Mr Richard/Meat and Potatoes/The Life Pursuit
"If only we could see past the
veneer we'd see another side of you"
While first EP and single compilation 'Push Barman
To Heal Old Wounds' was more generous than it needed to be, this single disc
set taking in the highlights of non-album songs dating from between 2003 and
2012 seems a little stingy by B and S standards. For a start, not everything
that ought to be on this album is here (we've listed a lot of them already, but
key tracks missing are the cover of 'Baby Jane' 'Whiskey In The Jar' and
'Crash'). And what is here isn't here in any real order but collected kind of
randomly: for instance starting in 2003, jumping to 2010 and back again to
2003. We could mention, too, that the packaging is less 'complete' than last
time: there's no attempt to give us every essay included on the original works,
no reproductions of the artwork of each and every single and the front cover -
a hideous monochrome shot of a Victorian looking dance troupe - is easily the
worst on a B and S release to date. Add in the fact that, frankly, most of the
best stuff from the 'Catastrophe' 'Pursuit' and 'Write About Love' eras ended
up on the albums and the B sides only tended to be experiments and you have a
lot of reasons to spurn this set.
Which would be a shame for anyone missing a few of
the original singles. There aren't many highlights here by the band's high
standards but those that are remain key parts of the band's catalogue, worth
trawling through hell and high-water for, never mind be collected on a handy
and fairly cut-price compilation. 'Your Secrets' is a winning final song in the
'old' B and S style, 'Suicide Girl' one of the band's better stabs at finding a
more modern sound, 'Long Black Scarf' a memorable and cute Stevie Jackson song
about love and nostalgia, 'Travelling Light' a sweet folk ballad and 'Stop,
Look and Listen' a fun folk-rocker that more than deserved a place on an album proper.
In truth the rest isn't all that good but, hey, most bands would kill for even
one B-side this good at the peak of their career, never mind their comparative
twilight years. Released with - by Belle and Sebastian standards - a lot of
publicity and clearly viewed as a 'stop-gap' release to remind the public they
still existed, the set deserved better than a UK chart high of #44 (four places
lower than 'Barman' and the band's lowest 'non-Late Night Tales' chart placing
since 'If You're Feeling Sinister' seventeen years earlier).
A Now Complete Link Of Belle and Sebastian Articles Available
To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
'God Help The Girl' (Stuart Murdoch Film) (2014) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/belle-and-sebastianstuart-murdoch-god.html
Girls In Peace Time Just Want To Dance (2015) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/belle-and-sebastian-girls-in-peacetime.html
Belle and Sebastian: Existing TV Clips http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-existing-tv-clips.html
Belle and Sebastian: 12 Unreleased Songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-12-unreleased-songs.html
Belle and Sebastian: Non-Album Songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-non-album_29.html
Belle and Sebastian: Solo/Live/Compilation/Rarities
Albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/belle-and-sebastian-assorted.html
Essay: B and S Talkin’
‘Bout My Generation https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/belle-and-sebastian-essay-talking-bout.html
Five Landmark Concerts and
Three Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/belle-and-sebastian-five-landmark.html
