10. Belle and SebastianThe Boy With the Arab Strap
Glasgow had produced so much good music for so many years, but some cities run their course at times. Glasgow had kinda gone quiet, I was listening to things from elsewhere. Then suddenly came Belle and Sebastian! I loved it from the get-go. Yes I know it’s fey, but they quite quickly moved their sound on. You could go to any of their records but I am sticking with The Boy With The Arab Strap. There are four or five tracks on there that are great. And the progression from sub-Velvets stuff to mapping out their own world is just fascinating.
I always found them a bit sleazy, to be honest.
Yeah! And it didn’t fit, did it, because Stuart is so religious! They gave a real kick to Glasgow music, and right after them came a whole bunch of other new, great Glasgow bands. They were the indie darlings and it would have been easy for them to stay in that vein but they didn’t, they kept moving. For instance there’s a track called ‘You Didn’t See It Coming’, and there is a kinda dance version of it and it’s just brilliant. I’ll be honest and say I don’t like every song on every album, in fact on some of the albums I’ll like two songs. But that’s enough, those two songs will be killer. With The Boy With the Arab Strap there’s maybe one track that is so sub-Velvets it’s… okay, I get you want to write another ‘Sunday Morning’ but let’s move on! [Laughs.] But really, there’s not a bad track on it.
