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November 28, 2008

B & S on the BBC

I've been meaning to post a couple tracks from Belle & Sebastian: The BBC Sessions, a recently released compilation of the band's excellent early compositions laid to tape in the years just before the internet would have immediately delivered them to my greedy hands. Vacation travel and general hustle/bustle held this intent up. I will do so now, with no further delay...

Belle & Sebastian - "Lazy Jane"

"Lazy Line Painter Jane" obviously stands out among the band's endlessly charming 90s EPs because of guest vocalist Monica Queen. She's a showy extrovert in one of the most introverted pop bands of all time (or at least that was the shtick in their early configuration). Comparing her singing to Isobel Campbell's anemic whispers (or her pale duet partner Stuart Murdoch's for that matter), you get the feeling that she could rip that poor waif limb from limb. Her singing out always made "LLPJ" feel oddly triumphant, in spite of its protagonist's relatively dire straits. Monica Queen wouldn't have to wonder about how she got her name and what she was going to do about it; A) she wouldn't give a shit, and B) if she did she'd go bust some heads. With her part taken in this radio session by fellow wallflower Stevie Jackson, our Jane sounds much more plausibly adrift. That is until the 4:30 mark, when the band summons a instrumental force that restores the original's power, and perhaps even tops it.

Belle & Sebastian - "(My Girl's Got) Miraculous Technique"

Of the four non-released tracks the record contains, this is the best. By 2001, B & S were a band in flux. They'd not yet begun to morph into the good-time fun band of recent albums, but the old bookish persona had lost a lot of critical steam. Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant was an uneven record with fantastic high points that got shafted in the press despite them. Their soundtrack to Todd Solondz's Storytelling was just flat out bad. It could have used a song like this, with a disconnected piano loop and carefree string samples that predicts the sound Jens Lekman would later ride to his initial minor fame. The session its taken from was the last time Isobel would be present in the band's compositions, and illustrates the toll her departure took. It seems impossible that two voices as shy and retiring as hers and Stuart's could come together in such a grand, romantic way.

Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 28, 2008 04:20 PM

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