Rewind to 1996, and Belle & Sebastian’s debut album, titled Tigermilk, is the staple for any art school student worth her weight in Gouache. It starts with a song called The State I’m in, and so the storytelling begins.
She makes models of the Velvet Underground in clay, she fills her pockets with pharmaceuticals to fix her brain, and only one sticks around as he’s rendered incontinent in bed. So here is the Belle & Sebastian protagonist, too uncool perhaps for the fashion brigade on Liberty Hill and steeped in tragedy.
The sound is soothing and the melody upbeat. The lyrics layer irony and teen angst, sometimes simply moments from everyday life (such as a cold cup of tea tasting of washing up liquid), over a guitar.
But we don’t want anything else from the Glaswegian band who beat Steps to a Brit award in 1999.
They’ve appeared on the soundtracks to Adam Curtis’s The Power Of Nightmares, Todd Solondz’s Storytelling, and Juno – a climax to the storytelling is a teacher looking up some girls skirt. Belle & Sebastian’s clout defies the critics’ who so often say they’re a shy and retiring ensemble.
Fast forward to 2014, and they’ve cut their ninth album called Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. Songwriter Stuart Murdoch’s lyrics have very rarely been first person – at least, they haven’t until now. The opening track is Murdoch’s life, at least the life he led just before Belle & Sebastian was born. House-bound and with chronic fatigue syndrome prior to the formation of the group, it’s a period he has drawn on before. But never has he written anything as direct as ‘Nobody’s Empire’ – side one, track one of the new album. He says it’s the most personal thing he’s ever written.
There’s a great quote last year from Bob Stanley that sum the band up: “It’s all about trusting in the restorative power of pop music. If you’d trust anyone to write a great Europop song about Sylvia Plath, you’d trust Belle & Sebastian.”
Belle & Sebastian play at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham on the 10th May 2015. Tickets are priced at £25.
For more information or to book visit www.thsh.co.uk.
Being Erica 