Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Dogs on Wheels, or "Tossing a coin to decide whether you should tell your mum about a dose of thrush you got while you were licking railings"

So I'm dead. Tricking shit up left and right don't get you nowhere no more. Now I'm doing nothing but getting burned and sleeping with the Wallabees. Who are we, he says? Crunch hunters, most likely.

In any event, i've been feeding the itch lately. Somewhere under my right ear a little bug has been tickling me. I usually say Fuck Off to bugs and itches but this was different. It was a Pop Music bug and it had come from Scotland to remind me of my youth. I died again.

I first acquainted myself with Belle & Sebastian about seven years ago, immediately after Tigermilk was finally released in the States. I'd been hearing random rumblings about this "secret" band from Scotland that were like a college music class project sent by God to fix music and no one knew what they looked like. I also heard they had some steez out but it was their mythical first album that was prized above all - almost no one without any money had heard it too, because of a limited pressing. The holy grail of the new future.

The great folks at Matador did us well though, and class divides were once again bridged and music fan united with precious food. Tigermilk dropped, and I snatched (thanks, Rob Sheffield, though I still think you're a douchebag).

I loved the shit out of Tigermilk, even though it became weird and less Grail-like after I finally heard it. I dragged its melodies through every musical path I travelled, dropping tracks on mixes like secretly, somehow, they made up the framework of all musical power and with each I could bestow new and essential relevance onto an otherwise dead existence. "The State Am I", for declarations of purpose; "We Rule the School" for wistful development of tryst; "Mary Jo" for closing shop and laying to bed. I shoveled snow, I drove my car, I fought adolescent angst with them at my side, boasting my intentions to anything in my way. Here, for now.

But life changed, even though it didn't, and that was all with Belle & Sebastian. I heard more, yes - liked Feeling Sinister, didn't care much for the Arab Strap - but they never did much more in developing the concept of B&S as Dogma.

And then, after a time, I forgot. Not completely - they were still on those mixes , of course - but they were nostalgia now, bottled feelings and memories for a time and place no longer to found, only to be felt. I even saw them again and it was cute, but more like going to a family reunion after estranging yourself from the family and meeting an eight year old grandson you hadn't seen since birth. They pulled a girl out of the crowd to sing "Gigantic" and I thought to myself, "My, I hope this is special for her."

Sometimes the departed will bless you with a return, however, and now I am happy to say that I have been lucky. Last summer my friends released a compilation called Push Barman to Open Old Wounds that collected all the detritus I'd left strewn across the years and put it in one neat place where I could enjoy it as whole. I wrote about this to you in such excitement that i was prompted to take on the lofty project of revisiting the uncared-for resting places of many other folks' great ideas.

And yet, despite my great enthusiam, I managed to pass over this gem until just a few weeks ago, as you know how things often go. Sometimes living the jetset can get you down when you're not able to properly connect with your needs and desires and this was certainly the case in 2005.

Luckily for me, I was spurred into gear by the unexpected attack of the new deez The Life Pursuit. I'm not sure if anyone has heard the album yet (or if anyone still hasn't), but I must tell you straight up that it is startlingly great. As someone who hasn't really felt this band for many years, it was an unbelievable feeling to be suddenly overcome by the urgency of their music (even if it is less anxious than it was before) once again. The album's beginning, "Act of the Apostle", christens a tone of immediacy that is immediately solidified by the classic "Another Sunny Day". This latter track is so good it makes my ears hurt and sometimes I can't listen to it because I know i won't be able to do anything for an hour or maybe a day. I'm not joking, it's absolutely crippling.

After these tracks come a few numbers that remind you that it's not 1999 anymore: "White Collar Boy", "The Blues are Blue" and "Sukie in the Graveyard" possess confident near-sneers that would probably be shocking if they could be timewarped back a few years ago (the yelps!); now they make you smile like the aforementioned granddad and pleased like a meditating thirtysomething. By the time "Sukie in the Graveyard" arrives, I'm fully enraptured by the forgotten glow, but nothing can prepare me for "We are the Sleepyheads", a lilting new-wave that automatically renewed the B&S License to Pop with me forever. The rest of the album stays fresh, though "Funny Little Frog" is a strange lead single given it's only the fifth best song, and I can do without the lone Stevie number "To Be Myself Completely" (more Ringo than George), but the return to "Act Apst.'s" melody amidst Act II into "For the Price of a Cup of Tea" is fucking heavenly. So much goodness, packed into one place. I originally forgot to copy album closer "Mornington Crescent" onto my iPod and I wish i'd never realized my error, but my oh fucking my, still.

The great discoveries of The Life Pursuit then led me to some great (re)discoveries within the confines of Push Barman. A two-disc comp collecting all b-sides up 2001, by the time i heard this treatise my feelings were finally beyond dissuasion - Belle & Sebastian are back, and I shall take them to the grave.

While I legitimately want to argue that everything on these two discs is essential, you can probably boil it all down to the four track Lazy Line Painter Jane EP buried at the center of disc one, and "This Is Just a Modern Rock Song" beginning disc two. For me - despite everything i just crowed about the glory of Life Pursuit - the real goods here are the three '97 EPs making up disc one (once making up the contents of the Lazy Line Painter Jane box set); while most disc two is also great, it's really the old shit that does it for me, and the LLPJ EP most of all. The tracks on Dog on Wheels are great, raw and uncertain (and including an "unmissable" demo of "The State I Am In"), and 3.. 6.. 9.. Seconds Of Light Can of course has "A Century of Fakers", one of their best, but Lazy Line is the apex. Can I even boil these down to a favorite? Sure I can: sorry for the repetition, but I saw God the very first time I heard "Lazy Line Painter Jane" and he told me that I'd died and heard all that there was to hear. Closely following this beautiful scorcher is the sweeping grandeur of "Photo Jenny"; together, these two tracks BEG me to summon every last superlative of hyperbole at my command, and repeat over and over again.

You probably already have opinions about Belle & Sebastian, but if they aren't of the opinion that these folks are angels, then you are most likely wrong.

Required listening:
"The State I Am In (demo)"
"Lazy Line Painter Jane"
"Photo Jenny"
"A Century of Fakers"
"This Is Just a Modern Rock Song"
"Another Sunny Day"
"We Are the Sleepyheads"
"For the Price of a Cup of Tea"

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There is more to come. And hopefully, soon there will be no more YSI links either. Solid (stolen) gold. Coming up next: slangeditorial.net

"I count "three, four" and then we start to slow,
Because a song has got to stop somewhere."

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 2/22/2006 01:43:00 AM 3 comments

3 Comments:

Accidentally Disastrous said...: I would like to agree with you on almost all counts, Jeffrey.
I havent felt B&S for a long time. Tho, Piazza, New York Catcher off that last album was pretty fucking stellar.
Tigermilk and IYFS are amazing albums, but I firmly stand behind Boy w. The Arab Strap as the best album they released. I stand on a lonely island when i make this declaration, i know. The key to TBWTAS is just skipping the first song, it is one of the least songs in their whole canon.
Lazy Line Painter Jane is the best song the group ever released. Period. Followed closely by This is Just a Modern Rock Song. Altough, Judy is a Dickslap is quite a nice little instumental off the Legal Man EP.; 2/22/2006 12:36:00 PM
Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything said...: AD,
I agree with you on "Piazza", as well as a number of other tracks from Dear Catastrophe Waitress (which is actually what you might call their "comeback album"). I can't, on the other hand, agree with any argument in favor of the "quality" of Boy With Arab Strap, as nearly every song on it is either bad or boring. This is of course the age old B&S argument, but i've never understood the confusion. Also, I'm not a fan of B&S male vox not from Stuart M. But i do dig "Judy Is a Dickslap".; 2/22/2006 04:03:00 PM
ezruh sellof said...: judy is a dickslap. how can a band who seems so cute use a word like dickslap?; 2/23/2006 05:58:00 PM