BELLE AND SEBASTIAN: PUSH BARMAN TO OPEN OLD WOUNDS (1997-2001/2005)
CD I: 1) Dog On Wheels; 2) The
State I Am In; 3) String Bean Jean; 4) Belle & Sebastian; 5) Lazy Line
Painter Jane; 6) You Made Me Forget My Dreams; 7) A Century Of Elvis; 8) Photo
Jenny; 9) A Century Of Fakers; 10) Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie; 11) Beautiful;
12) Put The Book Back On The Shelf/Songs For Children.
CD II: 1) This Is Just A
Modern Rock Song; 2) I Know Where The Summer Goes; 3) The Gate; 4) Slow
Graffiti; 5) Legal Man; 6) Judy Is A Dick Slap; 7) Winter Wooskie; 8) Jonathan
David; 9) Take Your Carriage Clock And Shove It; 10) The Loneliness Of A Middle
Distance Runner; 11) I'm Waking Up To Us; 12) I Love My Car; 13) Marx And
Engels.
From an inevitably Beatlish perspective, this
lengthy 2-CD retrospective is Belle & Sebastian's Past Masters Vol. 1: a compilation that does not add much to one's
understanding of the band's essence if you already got all the regular LPs, but
a quintessential artefact all the same if you are enough of a fan to want to
own everything «important». The discs neatly and meticulously collect almost
everything that Murdoch and Co. released in between the regular LPs: four EPs
recorded and published in 1997-98 and three singles released in 2000-2001. In
other words, the album elegantly reflects the first period of the band's
existence — the «introspective folk-pop years», stopping right before the
transition to the louder, more colorful pop-rock sound of Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Life
Pursuit.
To own such a well-assembled collection is
always pleasant for a reviewer, providing the opportunity to avoid reviewing each
little EP under its own title or ignoring them altogether — but it also makes
life tough at the same time, since there is so much material here that picking
out the highlights and striving not to forget to pat the «hidden gems» on the back
can be a real headache. The problem is, Murdoch took as much care of and pride
in his EPs and singles as everything else, and none of these songs could be
described as «filler»: everything shows the same attention to detail, focus on
taste, and lyrical insight as the best songs on Tigermilk and whatever followed. And just as well, at the same
time, everything sounds «the same» — permeated with the mellow-morose vibe,
pretty, smart, and relatively hookless.
So as not to get lost myself and not to lose
anybody else in the process, I will offer a brief-rundown — listing each of
the individual components of the retrospective and highlighting what looks like
one potential highlight off each one. First on our list is Dog On Wheels, a four-song EP from May 1997, thematically linked to
Tigermilk (both records even have
the same Joanne Kenney on the photo, this time with a toy animal instead of a
real one). The title track, with its unusually (for Murdoch) bluesy acoustic
melody appeals to me on a special level, but «objectively» the EP is more
notable for containing a song that is actually titled ʽBelle & Sebastianʼ — its lyrics finally providing the
curious fans with an artistic motivation behind the choice of the band's name,
rather than just the dry technical facts. Other than Murdoch singing about an
octave higher than his normal range allows him without straining, it is quite a
touching experience.
Next, we have Lazy Line Painter Jane, another 4-song EP where the highlight is
clearly the title track, recorded in a church hall (too bad the organ employed
is clearly not the church organ) as a duet between Murdoch and guest vocalist
Monica Queen — a dense, fully arranged number making good use of the echoey
acoustics when it comes to the climactic crescendo, and sarcastically
assassinating a «sexually liberated» protagonist along the way. The lyrics may
be just a little too silly and a little too vile, but musically, the song is
one of their more interesting productions of 1997, before the sonic ambitions
were toned down once again.
Following this up with 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds Of Light, another EP where I was initially
seduced by the fast-moving, wildly agitated ʽLe Pastie De La Bourgeoisieʼ, but
eventually decided that it is trumped by ʽBeautifulʼ, which rolls along at a
slower pace, leisurely takes its time to build up, and eventually unfurls into
a majestic, but incredibly sad allegoric anthem to all the silly people,
deluded by society and themselves, with strings, brass, organ, and vocal
harmonies gracefully assembled together in one polyphonic lament. Again, this
sort of arrangement is not at all typical of the band's early studio LPs,
showing that Murdoch regarded LP expression and EP expression as two
significantly different kinds of activity.
The fourth EP, This Is Just A Modern Rock Song, released late in 1998, does not
particularly impress me with anything. Its title track drags on for seven
minutes and mainly depends on its autobiographical flavor — beginning with an
account of some of Stuart's girl relations and then going on to comment on the
entire band ("we're four boys in corduroys, we're not terrific but we're
competent"), name-dropping Dostoyevsky and ending with self-irony ("I
count three, four and then we start to slow, because a song has got to stop
somewhere"), but really, melodically the whole thing is too bit of a drag.
Murdoch is a man of many talents, but it is not in his power to come up with
his own ʽDesolation Rowʼ — his metabolism rate is too slow for that.
The second disc is almost completely devoted to
the single format, and the songs there progressively keep sliding into
smoother, more lethargic territory, although ʽLegal Manʼ is a psychedelic dance
number, on the surface — retro-oriented at recapturing the «sunshine» of hippie
happiness, under the surface — most likely, an ironic look at the ongoing revivalism
of Sixties idealism, with its fairy chants of "L-O-V-E love, it's coming
back, it's coming back" and appeals to the listener to "get out of
the city and into the sunshine". I do not think the song works at all — it
is too dazed and melancholic to imitate stark raving happiness, and too stark
ravingly happy to match the usual melancholic standards. Stuck somewhere in the
middle with no particular place to go, and I'd rather listen to ʽJudy Is A Dick
Slapʼ, which (thank God!) is actually an instrumental driven by what sounds
like a Moog solo (in the 2000s? Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson ahoy!).
Still, some of the B-sides have their little
pings and clinks: ʽThe Loneliness Of A Middle Distance Runnerʼ has a cool
flanging effect on the guitar solo, and ʽI Love My Carʼ is quite a hilarious martial-pop
Kinkophile dream that also finds space to accommodate the Beach Boys, as
"I love my car" eventually becomes "I love my Carl" and the verse is tolerantly
concluded with the line "...I could even find it in my head to love Mike
Love". Okay, so I admit that I always try to measure my feelings for
Murdoch art without taking lyrics
into consideration, but I also have to admit that the man has a good feel for
phonetics, allowing sound similarity to lead him in all sorts of unpredictable
directions — good bribery material for any writer with a linguistic background,
that. On this note, I have no choice but to give the compilation a thumbs up
and state that its first disc at
least is a strong pretender to «best B&S album of the 20th century»,
whereas the second one, dispensing its highs and lows with a little less energy,
still has its fair share of pleasures for the experienced fan. And yes, these
are «old wounds» indeed, but enough of them have a significantly unusual shape
for the experienced sadomasochist not to get bored.
Check "Push Barman To Open Old Wounds" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Push Barman To Open Old Wounds" (MP3) on Amazon
How 'hookless' could even conceivably be applied to this album/artist, I will never know. Truly your definition of the hook is one of a kind, George. And that's quite apparently NOT a live tiger on the cover of Tigermilk, so, I don't know, maybe take at least a cursory glance at the album art next time?
ReplyDeleteYou're right about the tiger, somehow the cool idea of a live tiger cub got stuck in my mind.
DeleteAs for the hooks - B&S are ploughing the same field as the Beatles, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Big Star, and force me to look at them from that perspective. Sometimes they're doing alright (especially with the transition to electric pop), but on those early records it's mostly about tone, atmosphere, and lyrics. But "hookless" is not necessarily a criticism - sometimes atmosphere is more important than a brain-exploding chord change. And, of course, if you compare the band to Arab Strap instead, they are the epitome of hookiness, no question about that.