Belle and Sebastian
| Belle and Sebastian | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General information | |
| origin | Glasgow , Scotland |
| Genre (s) | Indie rock , indie pop , twee pop , folk |
| founding | 1996 |
| Website | belleandsebastian.com |
| Founding members | |
| Stuart Murdoch | |
| Stuart David (until 2000) | |
| Current occupation | |
Vocals, guitar, keyboard |
Stuart Murdoch |
Vocals, guitar |
Stevie Jackson (since 1996) |
Keyboard |
Chris Geddes (since 1996) |
Violin , vocals |
Sarah Martin (since 1996) |
Trumpet , bass |
Mick Cooke (since 1998) |
Guitar, bass |
Bobby Kildea (since 2001) |
| Richard Colburn (since 1996) | |
| former members | |
Singing, cello
|
Isobel Campbell (1996-2002) |
Belle and Sebastian is a British indie pop band. The band name refers to the children's book Belle et Sébastien by the French author Cécile Aubry about the boy Sébastien and his dog Belle.
history
The band was formed in January 1996 by Stuart Murdoch and Stuart David as part of a social program for the unemployed in Glasgow . Murdoch previously wrote a large part of the songs for the first releases. The debut album Tigermilk was recorded in three days and sold in an edition of just 1000 vinyl records. Due to the good reception, the band signed a contract with the Scottish label Jeepster and recruited additional members. The second album If You're Feeling Sinister was released in November 1996, followed by three EPs in quick succession in 1997 .
With their third studio album, The Boy with the Arab Strap , released in 1998 , the band achieved a commercial breakthrough, reaching number 12 on the British charts. The following year, to everyone's surprise, the band won the BRIT Award for Best British Breakthrough Act .
Belle and Sebastian were initially considered to be extremely media and press shy, appearances outside of Great Britain were rare. Nevertheless, the band gained a worldwide fan base. After their hit Legal Man, which entered the British Top 20 in 2000 , the band ended this self-chosen isolation with an appearance on the program Top of the Pops , followed by a first world tour. The bassist and co-founder Stuart David left the band and concentrated on his side project Looper , in 2002 Isobel Campbell did the same and started a solo career. The following year they released the album Dear Catastrophe Waitress, produced by Trevor Horn . For the first time in the band's history they released a single from an album with Step Into My Office, Baby , so the previous strict separation between single, EP and album was ended. Another album called The Life Pursuit followed in February 2006. In 2007, their songs Piazza, New York Catcher and Expectations were used for the soundtrack of the critically acclaimed film Juno . The soundtrack itself was also a commercial success.
The next studio albums Write About Love and Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance will be released with a longer time lag in 2010 and 2015 respectively. As of December 2017, the band released a series of 3 EPs under the name How to Solve Our Human Problems and returned with it back to the format from its early years.
style
The style of the band is described alternately as twee pop , baroque pop , jangle pop, or simply indie or folk pop, especially in the English-speaking world . Characteristic for the lyrics of the main songwriter Stuart Murdoch are small stories that tell episodes from the lives of outsiders in teenage years. Earlier recordings (around 1996-2001) were mostly produced by the band themselves and often had rather sober arrangements that mostly went in the direction of folk.
Only with the release of the album Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003) did Trevor Horn get professional help in the studio. The result was an opulently orchestrated sound that was significantly more polished and poppy than that of the previous albums. This was not surprising either, since Horn had previously worked with bands such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood or the Russian pop duo tATu . The band followed this path consistently and released the follow-up The Life Pursuit in 2006 , this time with Tony Hoffer as producer.
A special feature of Belle and Sebastian is that since the third album The Boy with the Arab Strap , other band members have played the lead voices instead of Stuart Murdoch: Stevie Jackson, Sarah Martin and, until they left the band, Isobel Campbell and once Stuart David with a spoken text (in A space boy dream ).
The album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance shows a wider range of styles, in addition to the more classic songs there are borrowings from disco, klezmer, soul and europop to be heard.
Discography
Studio albums
- 1996: Tiger Milk
- 1996: If You're Feeling Sinister
- 1998: The Boy with the Arab Strap
- 2000: Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
- 2002: storytelling
- 2002: Tigermilk / If You're Feeling Sinister
- 2003: Dear Catastrophe Waitress
- 2005: Push Barman To Open Old Wounds
- 2006: The Life Pursuit
- 2010: Write About Love
- 2015: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
- 2018: How to Solve Our Human Problems
- 2019: Days of the Bagnold Summer
Web links
- Works by and about Belle and Sebastian in the catalog of the German National Library
- Official website
- Belle and Sebastian at laut.de
- Belle and Sebastian on MusicBrainz (English)
- Belle & Sebastian in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Belle & Sebastian in the Rolling Stone review archive
swell
- ↑ Belle And Sebastian biography on laut.de
- Jump up to an EP series by the Scottish chamber pop / indie darlings in Musikexpress, December 8th, 2017
- ↑ Belle and Sebastian at Allmusic (English)
- ↑ Review of Dear Catastrophe Waitress on Pitchfork Media
- ↑ The text on "Expectations" is an example; Lyrics see here
- ↑ Disco, Klezmer, Soul and Europop: The new diversity from Belle & Sebastian in Musikexpress, January 15, 2015
- ↑ On the dance floor with Sylvia Plath in FAZ from January 12, 2015, page 10