Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
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Free Music Notes for If You're Feeling Sinister
Free Music Review: If You're Feeling Sinister
Hit: 5 Stars
Lots has been said in the other reviews already here on Amazon. But it still deserves another 5-star rating. This album is excellent.
I like all 10 songs - my favorites probably being tracks 1,2,5,6,7,8 and 9. I think this album might not be as immediately satisfying as something like The Life Pursuit (definitely recommended, by the way!) - which seems to have more of a mainstream-rock type sound, but after one or two listens the songs really come alive on this album.
Stars of Track and Field builds up to a nice peak somewhere in the later half of the song, Fox In the Snow has perhaps somewhat of a sad tone to it, but is great, Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying is just outstanding, I love the strings in The Boy Done Wrong Again, really everything is good and you should check it out!
Free Music Review: Last album with original members, last one recorded in the church hall, Stuart's favorite
Hit: 5 Stars
If I had to choose the best Belle & Sebastian album ... I couldn't.
But "If You're Feeling Sinister" is the album I'd recommend for anyone who is looking to listen to some of their older music because they like a newer release and want a good starting place to get into some of their older stuff.
Alternately, if you've heard "Tigermilk" and/or "Boy with the Arab Strap" and like them, then this album is a more melancholic, complex, sophisticated, and oddly arousing take on their older story-like songwriting style.
When this album was released, the band never did publicity and it was next to impossible to find a picture of any of them. They sent out press photos with them in a classroom with their heads down on a desk.
Stuart David, then-bass player for the band, was really into this ink polaroids concept, where words better captured a person in a moment of time than taking a photo would because they wouldn't know they're being photographed. This was Stuart David's last album recorded with the band, and when he left the band they started doing publicity, interviews, playing more shows, toured and Stuart Murdoch's face and comments started appearing in many fan zines. Stuart David made his side project, Looper, his full time gig.
"Fox in the Snow" is lead singer Stuart Murdoch's favorite song, at least that's what he said to my friend in 2001 after my friend told him that her 4-year-old's favorite song was "Fox in the Snow."
The title track, "If you're feeling sinister," goes on to say, "go off and see a minister. He'll take away the pain of being a hopeless unbeliever." So a lot of hipsters and critics wondered if the band was, heaven forbid, religious. I like the line in that song where he says, "She was into S&M and bible studies, not everyone's cup of tea she would admit to me ..."
The only thing I don't like about this album is occasional song endings with blaring horns that seem to go on forever.
The best thing about early Belle & Sebastian albums is you can listen to them over and over again and always find something new, or catch something you missed before, and it's smart, insightful, poetic somethings that often make you feel better.
"If you're feeling sinister" has several tracks with really dense, woven, pretty stories and characters in them.
Free Music Review: "Nobody writes 'em like they used to, so it may as well be me"
Hit: 5 Stars
Detached, emotive, quiet, energetic, wistful, playful, folksy, and spiked with punkish enthusiasm, If You're Feeling Sinister is a thing of delirious beauty and hypnotic power. Its songs are full of irresistible hooks and languid poetry, with sumptuous, dreamy melodies unfurling beneath smartly delicate (and snidely decadent, although that part isn't as pronounced) vocals. The whole thing sounds like an uncanny cross-pollination of the Smiths and Simon & Garfunkel, shot through with strains of the Beach Boys and the Velvet Underground (think "Pale Blue Eyes"). It's a smokey, gentle record full of nervous majesty and two-faced poetry, a half-awake dream that rings with humor and warmth.
The opener, "The Stars Of Track And Field," sets the pace: It builds from a delicate acoustic strum to a whispered, introverted symphony, full of swaying melodies and strange imagery, before erupting into a truly volcanic crescendo. After that comes the lush, paranoid bedroom rock of "Seeing Other People" and the quirky generational anthem "Me And The Major." "Get Me Away From Here" is a quiet pop gem, and the title track is a gorgeously rendered pseudo-epic with fantastic lyrics. There's also the muted exuberance of "Mayfly," the pubescent drone of "The Boy Done Wrong Again," and "Judy And The Dream Of Horses," which mingles a bouncing rhythm with lyrics that are both unrelentingly sarcastic and genuinely affectionate. And let's not forget that atmospheric build of "Like Dylan And The Movies" or the haunted desperation of "Fox In The Snow."
So, ten great songs from a very, very great band. Sounds like a great deal.
Free Music Review: Wife loved it
Hit: 5 Stars
I thought that it was a little light in the loafers but my wife loved it.Free Music Review: Converted!
Hit: 4 Stars
This self-righteous, know-it-all, middle-aged, rock 'n' roll left over feels lucky to find one new band or artist every other year worth his time. I mean after the Beatles, Steely Dan, Allman Brothers, Hendrix, etc., etc., what's the point? Well, yes, there's Weezer, Spoon and Rooney, but that's about it.
Then after a three-year dry spell, last spring as I often do, I innocently borrowed two interesting looking CDs--Electric Blue Watermelon by the North Mississipi Allstars and Dear Catastrophe Waitress by B&S--from the town library. Suddenly, my cup ranneth over relevant to both.
"Step into My Office, Baby," the geeky jazz kick off to "Waitress," for example, told me I had found something special. And I fell in love with about half of that sporadically inspired LP.
Then after checking out here what was recommended, I ordered "Sinister," which took a while to appreciate after the slick production on DCW. But now, wow! "Fox in the Snow," "Like Dylan," "Mayfly," and "Judy and the Dream of Horses," are clasped to my bosom with hoops of steele!
Finally, people of taste and sensitivity, here's some great new stuff to explore. And I haven't felt so blissfully twee since Donovan!!