Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
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Free Music Notes for If You're Feeling Sinister
Free Music Review: This Shines internationally from a "dark era" called the 1990's
Hit: 5 Stars
You think you heard all the good music from the 90's there was to hear? Guess again. This album will make you orgasm and feel pangs of lost loves just because of how sweet and endearing it is. Incredible to pay attention to is the crossover from "Get me away I'm dying" to "If you're feeling sinister." It's almost as if the two songs are the same thing twisted right in the middle so you come out on the other end feeling like you know something important. As a friend once pointed out to me, once you start listening and loving this album, you will learn all the lyrics and enjoy it even more because of that.
Note: there are no guitar solo's. If you aren't willing to accept a little harmonic/folk aspect into your life then stray yourself, now. This album is incredibly beautiful and delicate, so I would strongly urge one to listen to it beforehand. If you have an overarching general adoration for all music that sounds good, not simply pop but sweet sounding music with integrity as well, get this. It may just change your life and motivate you to see belle and Sebastian before they die...or create a really sucky record that they would play during a concert. All the songs on this album are good. The song "Mayfly" i have found can be an annoying transition because it sounds like a cheerful hippy with ADD compared to the preceding song. But this is only Because of said transition. By itself, it is alright. Some of these songs will change how you view music, simply because they are that good.
Free Music Review: Belle and Sebastian's best album
Hit: 5 Stars
I've recently been turned onto Belle and Sebastian, and have bought most of their albums. "Sinister" is my favorite. The melodies are haunting, and the harmonies are beautiful throughout. Not a bad song on the album. It has joined my list of all-time great albumsFree Music Review: Don't let this be your first Belle and Sebastion
Hit: 3 Stars
I gave this only 3 stars not because it's not good but because it doesn't come close to some of their better albums. If your a big fan go ahead and get this CD but otherwise pass and get a better Belle and Sebastian album.Free Music Review: "It Only Happens Once A Lifetime..."
Hit: 5 Stars
So do you want talk of the music first or do you want The Theory?
Music? Okay.
It starts innocently enough, quietly enough. 'The Stars Of Track And Field' building softly to its confident acoustic climax - hints of pop purity amidst its (meaningful) meandering. There is nothing obvious about this but its beauty is - like all this - just that.
'Seeing Other People' is more immediate and kind of sums up why I love this album, this band. Lyrically it's very clever, about growing up ("We lay on the bed there/Kissing just for practice/Could we please be objective?/Cause the other boys are queueing up behind us...") and the stories we tell ourselves ("A hand over my mouth/A hand over the window/Well, if I remain passive and you just want to cuddle/Then we should be okay and won't get in a muddle/Cause we're seeing other people/At least that's what we say we are doing...")but I love this bittersweet gender blurring and then it's just plain funny ("You're going to have to change/Or you're going to have to go with girls/You might be better off/At least they know what they are doing..." - I love that pay-off line). There's nothing flash about the song though and musically it just draws you in. Before you know it you're hooked.
Candidates for best song on the album flow thick and fast.
'Like Dylan In The Movies' not only has a great title but just rolls along beautifully, so sure of itself, so sure of all of this. This was the first song I really adored on this album but now it's joined by 'The Fox In The Snow' (the repeated refrain of "What do they know anyway?/You read it in a book..." just gives me goosebumps)and the music merges with those great lyrics to form this mystical whole. I'm either sat there with tears in my eyes or this massive grin on my face.
It's joined by the self-deprecating glory of 'Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying' ("You could either be successful or you could be us...") and that is then joined by the Nick Drake of 'Mayflower' with its opening "Lovesick on a sunny afternoon..." which kind of nails the mood of much of this ("He had the moves to save the day/But you would love him anyway..."), a kind of celebration of the day to day, of the days as they go past with all the reasons how or why they change us, elate us or just leave us as we think we are.
The best is saved till last though. 'The Boy Done Wrong Again' and 'Judy And The Dream Of Horses' combine to round off this marvellous album in truly dreamy fashion. 'The Boy Done Wrong Again' sounds like a dream itself as it hypnotises ("All that I wanted was to sing the saddest song/And if you would sing along, I will be happy now...") and then the upbeat finale. "Judy wrote the saddest song..." is how it begins - see how everything just fits, how theme leads to theme and all moves to where you are or where you should be or where you want to be. "You dream of horses" is how it ends. In between you have pop perfection.
And then it's over. all too soon. So you have to stop and play it all again. Everything drifting...
And the theory? Sorry, The Theory? Oh,it's something and nothing. Well, compared to the music. Just something about how Belle & Sebastian almost singlehandedly saved indie (as in independent) music at a time when the greatness of Nirvana had inadvertantly ruined it, having ushered in an era where every indie band was being signed by the majors and then spat out after an album when the expected 'units' weren't 'shifted'. Creativity stifled and any idea of independent thought gone, just little things like a band being allowed to develop...whatever. Belle & Sebastian changed all that. A wilful independence, a refusal to acknowledge the game let alone play it...and then the change. Indie. Independent.
But then, come on, you can save your theory, all theories. Nothing much matters next to the majesty of this music. Play it again and play it louder each time. Yes.
Free Music Review: "And he remembers Roxy Music in '72" (* * * * 1/3)
Hit: 4 Stars
In my review of Belle & Sebastian's CD The Boy With the Arab Strap, I described the 1996 release If You're Feeling Sinister as the "better" album. I think that I was pretty much going along with the conventional wisdom that holds this to be true. At this point, however, I am not sure that I agree with this assessment. I am not now claiming that The Boy With the Arab Strap is better one, just that it is not by any means necessarily the lesser one. So to split the difference, let us say that they are equally good. Interestingly, about as many would disagree with this as would agree with it. I read a review of their 2006 CD The Life Pursuit which claimed that the band never fully capitalized on the momentum they developed with If You're Feeling Sinister. Granted, their 2000 and 2002 albums showed a sharp decline in the quaility of the band's output. However, to discount The Boy With the Arab Strap and 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress as subpar efforts is simply ludicrous.
Anyway, If You're Feeling Sinister was the band's first record to be given wide release, and was therefore the one which introduced the lucky few to the elements that have made Belle & Sebastian the beloved cult band that they have been ever since. Those with only a passing knowledge of Belle & Sebastian might be inclined to associate them with slow and pensive songs. These are indeed an essential part of their reportoire, as demonstrated on this album by "The Stars of Track and Field", "The Fox In the Snow", "The Boy Done Wrong Again", and "Judy and the Dream of Horses". (These titles themselves are indicitive of the whimsy that is also invitably - and rightly - associated with the band.) However, the band ventures just as naturally into uptempo territory on "Seeing Other People", "Me and the Major", the title track, and "Mayfly". This contrast keeps the record from sounding too much like a collection of bedtime stories, even though IYFS is less dynamic than some of their other records.
When I first heard "Me and the Major", I mistook those words as "me and the midget". Thus, I misheard one of the lyrics as "Me and the midget don't see eye to eye". While this was a humorous mistake, it made sense to me that such a lyric would come from Belle & Sebastian, as they are quite keen with their word play and verbal imagery, eg, "She was into S&M and Bible studies". Musically, Belle & Sebastian's sound is based primarily on strings and delicate acoustic guitars, to the almost complete exclusion of electric guitars. This combination is decorated by non-traditional pop instruments such as harmonica, trumpet, and saxaphone. The band uses these to full effect without making the songs sound like exercises in the genres more commonly associated with these instruments. This sound - along with the lyrics - deliberately invoke melancholy. In fact, the last two songs on the album refer to someone writing or wanting to write "the saddest song". And as lead singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch sings on "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying", "I could kill you sure/But I can only make you cry with these words".
But still, as I said in my review of The Boy With the Arab Strap, Belle & Sebatian's music is much more life-affirming than it is depressing. Moreover, Stuart Murdoch is not as brooding or woe-is-me as say, Morrissey. Having gotten in B&S in a somewhat backward fashion (I heard Dear Catastrophe Waitress before anything else), I missed the female vocals present on later albums but absent from IYFS. This does not make it a lesser album, but rather, it helps keep other releases from sounding too much like it. Thus, IYFS was a fine springboard for future ideas from Belle & Sebastian, and it is every bit as good as - but not better than - anything the group has ever recorded.