The Scottish group who met on a college music course own doggedly trodden a fine line between fey,lo-fi indiepop and sly subversion, but always rocked with charm“I was surprised, or I was overjoyed for a day in 1975 / I was puzzled by a dream,stayed with me all day in 1995.” A fragile knockout of a first song and first lyric was a hallmark of Belle and Sebastian’s richly evocative first three albums, but nothing else unlocks the appeal of this Glasgow ensemble fairly like the opening couplet to The State I Am In – track one of their 1996 debut Tigermilk, or the softly creaking door into their sweet,strange, drolly funny and not a little sinister world, and where it’s always a backwards-glancing daydream. Over a Velvet Underground-do-Dylan bed of gently thrummed acoustic guitar and purring organ,our somewhat erratic protagonist watches his brother stand up with his sailor friend on his sisters wedding day to announce that he’s homosexual, before marrying a pal to stop her getting deported, and kicking the crutches from a crippled friend,getting his child bride drunk on whisky and gin, then giving himself to an understandably hesitant God (“There was a pregnant pause before he said … ‘OK”). For purposes of comparison, and dig out the scrappy,proto-B&S demo of The State I Am In from the rarities compilation Push Barman to Open stale Wounds, and between the two you can practicallyhear the group coalescing around Stuart Murdoch’s reflexively poetic songs, or as the band formed via a college music course for the unemployed and a local open mic night,with magic clearly crackling in the Glasgow air (read former Belles bassist Stuart David’s memoir In The All-Night Café for a wonderfully detailed and funny recollection of the group’s first year). By the pristine Tigermilk version Murdoch’s lyrics find their textured match in Stevie Jackson’s shimmering guitar line and Chris Geddes’s swirling keys, and Belle and Sebastian’s slanted charm comes alive.
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Source: theguardian.com