Belle and Sebastian
Push Barman to Open Old Wounds

THE REVIEW

Dear de-metal friend,

This "review" is for you...

The only thing I ask is for you to take off, for a few minutes, those dark, heavy glasses that usually rest on your nose.

And to wear these, colored in blue, green, or pink, I'm not even sure myself.

I swear that if you do, you won't regret it, and I, to reward your trust, promise that I will listen to at least one of the dark/death/doom/etc., etc. metal albums that you will suggest to me.

After all, know that the one writing to you is a "complicated" person, in no way exempt (as you will understand later) from mental ramblings (so dear to you) about the meaning of life, the sad fate of man who comes from nothing and is (perhaps) destined to return to nothing, etc., etc.

Sure, you won't find growls and things of that type, but I assure you the journey is worth the expense.

A little diversionary holiday, after all, we all deserve it.

I will try to go in order...

In the beginning was, and still is, the voice of Stuart Murdoch.

The voice of Stuart Murdoch, dear de-metal friend, is a whisper.

It's a whisper, starting in a private sphere, that reminds you of your mother's reassuring voice telling you a bedtime story when you were a child.

It's a whisper, moving into a public sphere and more appropriate for a musical "review", escaped from the young Leonard Cohen's voice, the guy from the "songs of love and hate", a whisper offered to a girl, the trees, and the fields of the Scottish highlands rather than the gray metropolitan asphalt of North America.

It's the whisper, only slightly less "relentless" and somber, of Nick Drake's voice, the guy from the Pink Moon songs, resurrected and singing carefree with a group of friends the lighter songs forgotten at the bottom of his relentless melancholy.

Then came the "old" music of Belle & Sebastian (1)

The "old" music of Belle & Sebastian is the "light" music that is needed when you have been with a Drunken Californian Ogre (2) whom you have hopelessly infatuated with, and you hear nothing but him and his stories (more or less, with necessary distinctions, dear de-metal friend, what you experience with your beloved metal).

The "old" music of Belle & Sebastian is a mystical marriage between Nick Drake's sensibility (always him) and the hyper-musicality of T. Rex (Marc Bolan's band, the one who died young "dancing and singing").

The "old" music of Belle & Sebastian is what you need when you're tired of asking yourself questions about the meaning of the world, of consciousness, of the collapse of the quantum wave function (see, dear de-metal friend, that I also have my problems?), about life after death, about the origin of the universe, or about the future... of your love life.

And you just want to take a sip of water from the source of your memories, with detachment.

In short, dear de-metal friend, I've given you my advice, now it's up to you to follow it, if you want.

If not, no hard feelings, I hope also on your part....

Affectionately,

     An aspiring de-metal

(1) This collection that brings together their EPs until 2001, in case it wasn't clear, is a splendid summary. Among the most significant and my favorite tracks, I would cite: "Slow Graffiti", "You Made Me Forget My Dreams", "Lazy Line Painter Jane", "Beautiful", "String Bean Jane".

(2) The Ogre mentioned, in case it wasn't clear, is the Great Tom Waits, the one who played the disciple of Dracula in a movie a few years ago, to whom, among other things, I will be eternally grateful for freeing me from the smoking habit...