Anti-Climacus

Last week was mostly cloudy and rainy, which is perfect Belle and Sebastian weather. On Twitter I suggested what has rapidly become my own personal orthodoxy, which is that their newer albums--The Life Pursuit and Write About Love are superior to the two on which their reputation was built, The Boy With the Arab Strap and If You're Feeling Sinister. It's not a difficult argument to make: the earlier albums have clear weak spots ("Seymour Stein," "The Boy Done Wrong Again") and the latter albums don't; the early songs focus almost exclusively on school-type experiences, whereas the subject matter of the later albums is more varied and less adolescent; the sonic palette of Sinister is pretty limited, and though Arab Strap improves on that, it's not by much. They're still excellent albums, they just mostly get by on nostalgia.

Since we're pretending, like all good Belle and Sebastian fans, like the two albums between the four I just mentioned never happened (having Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like a Peasant be your first encounter with the band is also likely to make it your last. it took me three years and some convinced friends to change my mind), that leaves Tigermilk, the first album. One should say the obvious things about it: within the first three songs, the listener gets about 90% of the B&S formula. It's inspired stuff, even if it gets a little same-y towards the end.

What does amaze me, though, is that the Belle and Sebastian fans I know are mostly religiously unaffiliated, and I can't think of a not-explicitly-Christian band that sings more about Christianity. The 'religious turn' in their lyrics is supposedly a feature of these later albums (and it's one of the things I like most about them), but it's all over the earlier ones, as well. Even here, on the first song on the first album: "and so I gave myself to God/ there was a pregnant pause before he said 'okay.'"

But what makes it work is the song behind it, especially the electric guitar bits, which work to accent and counterbalance the smoothness of the chord progression. I like, in particular, how it shifts from chording to fills, and manages to be high and ringing without aping Johnny Marr/Peter Buck's 'jangle' or The Edge's reverb-and-echo sound.