Product Details
The Boy With the Arab Strap (LP)Album Notes
| Miscellaneous |
| Belle and Sebastian includes: Stuart Murdoch, Stuart David, Isobel Campbell, Stevie Jackson. |
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| Additional personnel: Gail Anderson, Claire Campbell, Eilidh Campbell, Euan Forrester, David D. MacKay, Sarah Wilson (strings); Ian MacKay (pipes); Neil Robertson (bass). |
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| After 1997's IF YOU'RE FEELING SINISTER made them critics' darlings, Scottish octet Belle And Sebastian ran straight into a series of label woes, and into the inevitable feeding frenzy that surrounds a free agent with their prodigious talents. Their experience with one label exec is detailed in "Seymour Stein" on THE BOY WITH THE ARAB STRAP, which finds the band building on the pastoral pop charms of SINISTER, adding a palpable layer of anger and an increasingly rich sonic palette to their painfully shy tales of despair. |
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| Near-overnight success taught the band a lot. This album moves from their trademark confessional diary sketches (still in abundance, as on the disarmingly naive "Is It Wicked Not To Care," and the tender "Rollercoaster Ride") to genuine social criticism, as on the title track, a narrative meditation on Britain's pretensions and societal ills. "Chickfactor" pulls apart the banality the band encountered on arrival in New York, an experience which only served to deepen the bashful anger that makes Belle and Sebastian so endearing. |
Album Details
| Album Title | The Boy With the Arab Strap |
| Performer | |
| Number of Discs | 1 |
| Genre | |
| Sub-Genre | |
| Engineer | Tony Doogan |
| Mono/Stereo | Stereo |
| Studio/Live | Studio |
| Label | Matador (record label) |
| Catalog Number | 311 |
| Release Date | 09/08/1998 |
| Import | No |
| UPC | 744861031116 |
Artist/Group
| Overview |
| Formed in 1996, and hailing from Scotland, Belle & Sebastian are a musical collective with a penchant for ellipticism, declining to have their pictures on album covers or in the press, shying away from interviews, and never listing their individual names in album credits. This humility is in keeping with the gently bookish vibe the group evoke with their fragile, highly melodic pop tunes. Lead singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch sounds heavily influenced by '60s popsters like the Beach Boys, Bee Gees, and Hollies. His lyrics, however, are filled with references to contemporary pop culture and a trenchant, acerbic wit that contrasts with the friendly warmth of the music. |
| Definitive Albums |
| Dear Catastrophe Waitress |
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| Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant |
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| If You're Feeling Sinister |
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| Push Barman To Open Old Wounds |
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| The Life Pursuit |
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| Tigermilk |
Also See
| Performers |
| Campbell, Isobel; Dylan, Bob; Looper |
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