BELLE AND SEBASTIAN - THE BOY WITH THE ARAB STRAP

Last year college radio stations across America were humming with songs by a hitherto unknown band called Belle and Sebastian. Adored by college students and critics but virtually unknown to the masses, Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister found a special place in the hearts of those willing to look beyond the mainstream. Now the US is once again bathed in the glow of another release from this brilliant Scottish group. The new album, entitled The Boy with the Arab Strap is filled with as many beautifully heartbreaking songs as If You're Feeling Sinister was, and then some. "Is It Wicked Not to Care?" has a female vocalist wondering about issues of morality. (True to their indie-ness, B&S do not list any information about the band members, including their names, let alone who wrote what song.) The basic orchestral-folk-pop-ness they are known for remains thankfully intact, but with a few unexpected twists. "Sleep the Clock Around" features a fiesty marching-band style drum beat, while lead Singer Stuart Murdoch really pushes the limits of his impossible not to recognize voice on tracks such as his celebration of laziness, "A Summer Wasting" and the sublime "Simple Things". The most dramatically different moment, however is "A Space Boy Dream" in which someone with a very Scottish accent softly mumbles a dream about Mars over Brian Eno-like atsmopherics before the whole thing mutates into something that could almost but not quite be called jazz. Elsewhere, Murdoch makes his stand on commercialism on "Seymore Stein" in which he sings "record company man, I won't be coming to dinner". The song is so heart-whenchingly beautiful that it's easy not to notice that he is, however sweetly, giving the finger to the entire greedy music industry. In short, if you didn't like B&S before, there's little here that will change your mind. However, if you were one of the lucky few to not only discover but to fall in love with these amazing musicians, do not hesitate to buy this album.

Review by Aram at:  Frames Per Second

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