Students Messing Around With Guitars and Sharp Sticks

Who are Belle and Sebastian? What is an Arab Strap and why is the man on the cover impaled on a nasty looking stick? These and other questions may have crossed the minds of the audience when, in the wake of their rather lovely third album The Boy with the Arab Strap, the previously secretive and unassuming Glaswegian 8-piece incongruously beat off the likes of Billie and Steps to take the best newcomer award at the 1999 Brits.

Offering a gentle alternative to the rampant Oasis and Blur dominated lad culture of mid-90s Britpop, Belle and Sebastian (borrowing their name from a cute 70s children’s TV series about a boy and his dog in the French Alps) shunned publicity and acquired cult status largely through word of mouth. Building on the delicate songwriting of their first two albums The Boy with the Arab Strap adds orchestration whilst essentially retaining a low-fi core of fragile vocals backed by acoustic guitar, piano and soft snare “one-twos”, throughout a dozen catchy pop songs of nostalgia, adolescence, inadequacy, innocence, longing, desire, endless childhood summers, and odes to the joys of generally lazing around.

But this is no ordinary disposable pop; It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career starts the album with the line “He had a stroke at the age of 24”, and we immediately realise these are not songs you’re likely to be singing around the campfire this summer despite the accessibility of the simple nursery rhyme like melodies. The wistful and sometimes surreal lyrics will appeal to fans of Morrissey or Nick Drake, and conjure romantic images of colourfully dressed bohemians reading French poetry outside North Laine coffee houses on a sunny day. But then again Seymour Stein, recounting the band’s rejection of overtures from the wonderfully named real life major label boss, is far closer to the sound of latter day Velvet Underground than Greenwich Village.

After googling “arab strap” I noticed singer Stuart Murdoch mischievously changes the lyrics in the infectious hand clapping title tune to “You were laid on your back, with the boy from the Arab Strap”, a nod to fellow Scotch indie-band named after said item of bedroom-wear. I’ve yet to learn the story behind the cover picture, if any, despite posting a question on the band’s website; probably just students fooling about.