Belle And Sebastian
The Boy With The Arab Strap

THE REVIEW

My weak eyes continue to observe the night, too dense with annoying words like rattles in the quiet of the night. But unexpectedly, someone places this record in my hands, and I can't help but smile with a touch of melancholy as the notes of "It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career" melt away, recalling how many times it has accompanied me. The tightrope walkers wield their instruments and play at swinging on an invisible wire, hunted by the nocturnal lamentations of the cosmos, while a paper-mâché film runs before my eyes: it could be the cold, the fatigue, or perhaps the wine, but I am certain I hear the beams of the earth creak and the glassy painting of the world shatter elsewhere.

This is what I feel: a sincere peace, childlike and absolute. I sway on the sickle of the moon, bending the legs of imagination, the tightrope walkers kneel in my head and gently besiege the alcoholic jam that sinks me tonight into the crystallized cold: Stuart's voice has set the night on fire with naivety, it is a violent flare of something that cannot be violent, I sense it unchanged at my fingertips.

They treat the music with delicacy and poetry, at times making me think of the unforgettable Nick Drake. The Boy With The Arab Strap is always with me, tucked away in a pocket, in some bag or holdall, it has now become part of my moods, it's the Belle & Sebastian "formula" that spins here to centrifuge perfection, without exceeding, without necessarily having to do, say, or prove something, without ceasing to be genuine, as if the beauty of their music were paradoxical.