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One of the surprises of Tom's Twitter tourneys is that I sometimes like Belle and Sebastian. I'm still put off by the sensitive sensibility of their manner, but I'm also hearing in them Morricone-style mariachi and unsignaled Electric Prunes/Easybeats. And good tunes.*
In the meantime you also find me knocking about with medleys and cut-ups, lilting abrasion from Brazil, Korean guitar beauty, horny female guitar crunch, and freestyle guitar dance. (Roses are red, violets are blue/Disco goes dancing, guitars dance too.) Also, atmospheric wall-clawing hip-hop; declamation and mumbling from Kazakhstan (title, "Style is my wife - this flow-cave," from closed-caption translation); jazz; amapiano; and an actual Morricone.
*And you might be interested in this Belle and Sebastian colloquy (in response to "Stars Of Track And Field," not the track of theirs on this playlist, which is "Dog On Wheels"):
“Track And Field” is a lovely tune and a great intro to band and LP but the older I get the more creepy and uncomfortable I find Stuart M's kinda voyeuristic character songs so this was an easy pass.
— Tom Ewing (@tomewing) February 9, 2021
Barely paid even cursory attn the first time around, so B&S are one of the great discoveries of these polls. Had dismissed 'em as insufferably twee; now I hear fanfares and flourishes. "Creepy" is better than twee, isn't it? (Not looking at lyrics yet, but I do kinda hear it.)
— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) February 10, 2021
At their best, quite good; at their worst, definitely insufferably twee. But over time, if the quality of your work declines, that's what sticks. Always pleasant to discover that something you thought was shit has some nice bits too.
— 'greensleeves' at drunk karaoke (@WCWilmington) February 10, 2021
They have a couple of advantages over earlier indie pop groups - there's more of them (so more room for the instrumental colour you're hearing) and at their best they acknowledge and vibe on the creepiness where their predecessors pretended it wasn't there.
— Tom Ewing (@tomewing) February 10, 2021
They're also better listeners to the old music they love than most, which ends up suffocating them - the later stuff is arid (and yes twee) pastiche.
— Tom Ewing (@tomewing) February 10, 2021
I actually think the earlier, better stuff is more twee, I think their less interesting/strong material is once they moved away from that a little - though not in a causal sense, mind
— Ian Mathers (@ismathers) February 10, 2021
Yeah I would agree with that; I kind of like leaning into the weird discomfort of Stuart Murdoch as this kind of Chesterton Christian apologist figure
— Genufa (@petronia) February 10, 2021
(Not related to B&S, but I've been reading The Man Who Knew Too Much and it's very uncomfortable - the crime solver keeps letting well-connected miscreants get away, thinking it's better to preserve the social order than to confront its criminality.)
— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) February 10, 2021
But it's an early Belle & Sebastian that grabbed me, "Dog On Wheels," which even before it gets to the mariachi has already, maybe by accident, sounded like "Get Me To The World On Time" and "Friday On My Mind": so I keep listening for hard punk beats that never come.
— Frank Kogan (@koganbot) February 10, 2021
