Which belle and sebastian album is best

I just hated that period. It was a rudderless operation and there was a lot of intrigue going on with the band.

It was the end of the 90s so you had just endless studio time and budgets that no longer exist and I just remember being in there forever and it being a really obscene waste of time.

An album emerged from it eventually…. So why isn't this your least favorite? What were the moments that made you think that something special was happening? No, there were absolutely no special moments at all in it, actually.

I'm joking, as there were little flashes. We had ten songs and I think only five of them ended up on the record with another five emerging during the long, protracted process. I remember "Don't Leave the Light On, Baby" was a good moment and it was a positive statement at the time for us. I think it was maybe about four years ago or something that all of the early records on Jeepster were remastered for vinyl and it was me and [keyboardist] Chris Geddes who were volunteered to listen to them all and check the mastering, the vinyl and all that.

When I heard Fold Your Hands again, it was a revelation. I was surprised because I had to check the first four albums and sonically, Fold Your Hands sounded the best. It's a classic example of an album being colored by making it. We had a sort of sabbatical from the end of until the start of , which was nearly three years or something.

It kind of felt like a slight reunion to make the record. It was a very happy record to make and it was done really efficiently. It wasn't the most striking experience but it was really good. Her and Carey Mulligan, who sings on the title track, are special guests on the album which is new territory for Belle and Sebastian. Oh, it was fantastic. Both were great. They were slightly different in that Carey came in after we recorded the song and she sang on it.

She was great. But the Norah Jones experience is a whole other thing because it was recorded with her live with the band like an old school Frank Sinatra record. It was really, really fun. I remember thinking: what a voice. No wonder she's sold so many records.

Storytelling was really interesting for me. Like I mentioned, the Fold Your Hands period was essentially dysfunctional and I just wanted to quit, but Storytelling was really good. It wasn't an unqualified success because it was a soundtrack that didn't really get used in the movie it was named after. A couple of songs did, though. For a not ultimately positive outcome, it was a very, very positive experience for the group.

It was a period of rebuilding and it was quite nice to go and do something else. It made us a lot stronger and was almost like a rebirth for us. It just started to become fun again. It was also technically the first album without original bassist Stuart David. What was the experience with the band dynamic?

But I think the difference in the dynamic was that for other people, especially [multi-instrumentalist] Sarah Martin, Storytelling was a big leap in terms of coming up with material. She had written a great song for Fold Your Hands but Storytelling in my head is when she emerged as a real force. Charts Avg. Rating Num. Ratings Release Date Title. If You're Feeling Sinister. Belle And Sebastian. Buy album. Safe Mode: On Certain images on this site may contain adult content and are flagged as 'unsafe'.

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Lazy Line Painter Jane Compilation. Total albums: Page 1 of 2. Rating: 90 votes Comments: 6. Like Dylan In The Movies. Rating: 89 votes Comments: 2. The State I Am In. Rating: 89 votes Comments: 0. I'm A Cuckoo. Rating: 88 87 votes Comments: 1. Rating: 88 votes Comments: 6. Seeing Other People. Rating: 88 votes Comments: 3.

But every new Belle and Sebastian album delivers a clutch of fine new additions to the canon and their live show — a live show which, from fairly shambolic beginnings, has become better with practically each passing tour.

Murdoch recorded it on a beatbox, and was so taken by the tinny compression, tape-hiss and ghostly second-hand quality that he insisted this should be the final definitive article, and so it was. Prevailing wisdom dictates it should never have worked, but it did, and how. Which is Belle and Sebastian all over, really. Belle and Sebastian — 10 of the best. Album Of The Week. Arriving with a batch of tremendous, crackerjack songs, he is immediately placed front and center by the university-sponsored label?!?

Electric Honey, and proffered with funding to expand upon his vision with a full-length album. All of this may be absolutely credible and by-the-letter correct. His capacity as a storyteller from both the first- and third-person was precocious and startling — his songs were layered tales of wry and rueful outcasts, downtrodden miscreants and socially maladroit geniuses — characters so well drawn you could feel you were in a room with them.

As a singer he sounded a bit like Nick Drake, but as a lyricist he was immediately miles beyond him — closer in spirit to the rarefied company of Warren Zevon, Randy Newman, and Mark Eitzel. Crucially, while dealing frequently with heavy issues of depression and spiritual disillusionment, Murdoch never failed to intuit the power of a good joke. In love, presumably, with someone else. Having spun himself into a particularly horrifying predicament, Murdoch then rejoins with the following sentiment:.

There are many plausible theories as to why Murdoch may have decided to spread creative duties around — discomfort with the spotlight, a desire to share credit and songwriting revenue , or even creative fatigue on his own behalf — but the net result was some of the worst music the band has ever made. While Murdoch seems to have taken his thematic and lyrical cues from Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground, his interest in arrangements hues closer to the florid musical niceties of Left Banke or Serge Gainsbourg.

But as the next record would demonstrate, the trendline was not a good one.