by Belle & Sebastian List Price:$15.00 Our Price:$12.00 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Product Details
Media: Audio CD
Release Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Label: Matador Records
Average Customer Review: 0 Based on 0 reviews.
Sales Rank: 391
Tracks
1.
Judy Is A Dick Slap
2.
Lazy Line Painter Jane
3.
Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie
4.
Legal Man
5.
Marx and Engels
6.
Photo Jenny
7.
Put The Book Back On The Shelf
8.
Slow Graffiti
9.
String Bean Jean
10.
Take Your Carriage Clock And Shove It
11.
The Gate
12.
The Loneliness Of a Middle Distance Runner
13.
The State I Am In
14.
This Is Just a Modern Rock Song
15.
Winter Wooskie
16.
You Made Me Forget My Dreams
17.
Jonathan David
18.
I'm Waking Up To Us
19.
I Love My Car
20.
I Know Where The Summer Goes
21.
Dog On Wheels
22.
Belle and Sebastian
23.
Beautiful
24.
A Century Of Fakers
25.
A Century of Elvis
Editorial Review
In many ways this collection, which compiles each of the band's out of print EPs from 1997-2001, is all the "greatest hits" you'll need by the Scottish combo. It's easy to take Belle and Sebastian for granted these days--they don't sound as good as they used to, and certainly it’s difficult to imagine them ever becoming as culturally/musically relevant as they were once upon a precious, fey little time. But this collection brings the listener back to a time when it was crucially important to find their import EPs, when no one else in the world seemed to be making indie-pop that was so full of sincerity and irony at the same time, nor as gorgeously crammed with orchestral elements and naughty-smart lyrics. "The State I Am In" has never sounded better, while "Lazy Line Painter Jane," which expanded their sound to include C&W-ish elements, is clearly one of the band’s best tunes ever (and perhaps a more interesting direction than the vaguely soulful one they took later on). The almost-rolliciking, smartypants "Le Pastie De La Bourgeoise" is brutal and elegant. –Mike McGonigal
Top Customer Reviews
Rating:
5 a must for fans
I listen to my Belle and Sebastian albums religiously on a weekly basis (especially _Tigermilk_ and _If You're Feeling Sinister_), so when this double-CD collection came out I rushed out straight away and forked over my lunch money. If you're a devout fan or even a passing fan I recommend you do the same, or easier, scroll up and and toss this winner into your shopping cart. We're talking nearly Two Hours of Pure Belle and Sebastian for the price of a single album, what more do you need? There's also a limited-edition deluxe version on sale for the price of a regular double album, and from what I could glean from peering through the shrink wrap, looks like it's packed with bonus liner-notes material (or the same liner notes, with higher production value). The midprice version has all the same music though, and the music is what I'll concentrate on here... CD 1 offers 12 singles rooted in the smart yet tender hipster sensibility of the band's earlier days-- lovely, folky melodies about wistful softboys and precocious rebel girls, snapshots and lovesongs to an outsider GenXer scene held up by friendships and a communal yearning for genuine feeling. "Dog on Wheels" is a haunting coming-of-age tune about a boyish daydreamer and his best friend. "The State I Am In" needs no introduction. "String Bean Jean" and "Belle and Sebastian" are sweetly beautiful tributes to all of us who'd rather be vulnerable and true than sharky and successful; the heart breaks a little out of tune in the higher registers, and that's what singing is all about. "Lazy Line Painter Jane" and "You Made Me Forget My Dreams" recall the post-adolescent queer anarchy of _If You're Feeling Sinister_, but with a nod to the losers who never made the stars on track and field. "A Century of Elvis" is a rambling, quirky story well worth cocking your ear to. "Photo Jenny" is an upbeat song for arty types who "don't do drugs" and aren't serious dancers either. The intellectual in "A Century of Fakers" accuses his lover of selfish insincerity, while "Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie" takes a more rocking turn toward Judy Blume, Salinger, Keroauc, and the future that's "swathed in Stars and Stripes." But kindness outdoes irony in "Beautiful" and "Put the Book Back on the Shelf."I was a little anxious about the prospect of the second disc, because I'd felt disappointed with _Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant_, the album that approximates the era of the 13 singles on CD 2. So I was relieved and brightened to discover that my worries were for naught. The songs here are much, much better than ones on _Peasant_. Actually, they're quite fantastic, and many feature gorgeous, extended instrumental riffs that show just how brilliant the band is musically. The four tracks that make their US debut here-- "This is Just a Modern Rock Song," "I Know Where the Summer Goes," "The Gate," and "Slow Graffiti"-- have the immensely likeable, gently self-deprecating ("We're not terrific but we're competent"), in-no-particular-hurry quality of _Boy with the Arab Strap_. Musically, styles range from Burt Bacharach brass rhythms ("Slow Graffiti") and funk psychedelica ("Legal Man") to shades of early Beatlemania ("Winter Wooskie") and oldtimey carnival/dixieland crossed again with Bacharach (the hedonistic "I Love My Car"). All with the touching, biting lyrics that we've come to recognize and love. I mean, who else do you know who can pull off a rhyme between "Engels" and "riot girl"?-P. Lu
Rating:
5 Breathtaking
Look, maybe it's slightly hysterical and irrational to say that Belle and Sebastian are one of the greatest creations of humankind...But considering how much happiness they have brought me, how many times they have just stopped me in my tracks and forced me to listen to them when I must have had like six billion things to do, I think it is OK to suggest there is something magical and, like, supernatural about them. OK, so they are certainly one of the greatest bands of the modern era, can we at least say that? If you do not physically MELT when you hear songs like "Winter Wooskie" and"Slow Graffiti" or laugh at the sheer chutzpah of "The State I am In" or "I'm Waking Up to Us" then all is lost to you, my friend, because you HAVE NO SOUL...Officially enshrined now as the true Successor-To-The Smiths, they are heroes to the bookish, misbegotten poets, the misunderstood, the emotional and sensational lovers of Truth and Beauty. But their appeal grows even more universal by the day. Pretty much every single song on here is memorable, beautiful, shockingly melodic, and tinged with irony and hopeful mirth, the post-millenium's response to "Louder Than Bombs" if there could ever be such a thing. In a way, it's like the "chosen" people who were waiting for such a creation, gathered in their teeming subcultures of Proust novels, sensitive graphic novels, lonely web blogs about unrequited love, Smiths B-sides, obscure British Television, old campy movies, and pretentious wordy T-Shirts, and dreamed it up for themselves. But we need these people, and these people need the occasional prophet, right? Not that Belle and Sebastian would ever stand for something, well, that TANGIBLE, but Stuart Murdoch's fragile girlish vocals, the stunning catchiness of each track, the vocal harmonies, the incomprehensibly affecting and ridiculous lyrics...There's no denying it.Belle and Sebastian are one of the few bands who can create their own world. This double-record is a compilation of their non-album tracks previously released as a series EPs (a la The Smiths) billed as "an anthology of of the Jeepster and Matador Extended Play Singles 1997-2001." Their scottish playground melancholy, the single color-saturated record sleeves, the thoughtful passionate yearning of their ideas, the 60's throwback, the absurdly inane album titles, the press-shy multitudes of them, coming and going, more some sort of ethereal dreamy collective than "a band"--well, it's all here...their very own universe that is. Suck it up.Arguably, these non-album songs are just as good, if not better, than many of the songs that make up their rather prolific oeuvre (six proper albums, innumerable EPs)--albums all wonderful, but perhaps only excuses to surround a handful of brilliantly executed songs with a methodology for their existence. The songs here are chronological, the first CD including all the songs released on a clumsy boxset some years ago, before the onset of the digital age. So in a way, this release is certainly long-awaited and necessary for the connoiseur. In a way, their single EPs with all their humorous, bloated cover art, were like pearls in an oyster: little exhalations of beauty, over before they started, of seamless soul-crunching twee pop music. No more than 10-15 minutes, longer than your most memorable sexual awakening. I think of the "Legal Man" release, the title track of which was a swooning, danceable and uncharacteristic gem, followed by the joyous instrumental 'Judy is a Dick Slap" and then "Winter Wooskie"...So all these songs together in a way dilute their power, and cynics could argue their melding likens them all together, creating a bunch of songs all doing the same thing. But there is variation, and the people who these songs were meant for will appreciate it for what it is, and will definitely view this release as something essential.From the hushed quiet genius of songs like "You Made me Forget My Dreams" and "Beautiful" to the almost-rockers like " Le Pastie De La Bourgeosie" and "Jonathan David", this is definitely a CD to make you realize the true delicate genius of a band that loves to sliver in and out of your most potent daydreams.
Rating:
5 Finally!
This has been a long awaited for! Belle and Sebastian's individual EP's were always impossible to find in a record store, not to mention there are a large number of them. Thus, it is very nice to have every single one compiled chronologically at a very reasonable price, as opposed to buying all seven of them seperately. All of their albums are great, but on their singles Belle and Sebastian feel somehow more "free." They've let down their perfectionism and really experimented with new concepts, styles, and every single song is a gem-I believe all their best work can be found here. The first disc consists of their first three EP's-Dog On Wheels, Lazy Line Painter Jane, and 3...6...9 Secons of Light. All harken back to their early days of Tigermilk and If You're Feeling Sinister, yet more loose, with the slow and simple reinterpretation of The State I Am In, the fast sixtie's style pop song Le Pastie De La Boureoisie (which doesn't translate to anything, by the way), and the melencholy Put the Book Back On the Shelf. The second disk covers post If You're Feeling Sinister to the days of Fold Your Hands My Child, You Walk Like a Peasent-except much more inspired with their four EP's This IS Just a Modern Rock Song, Legal Man, Jonathan David, and I'm Waking Up To Us. This Is Just a Modern Rock Song is probably worth the whole collection alone-words can't really describe it. Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It has probably the most beautiful orchestral arrangement I've ever heard them produce, and Marx and Engels is superb. I would probably recomend this compilation instead of getting all seperate EP's due to cost (they still have all lyrics and covers inside the liner notes), and would certainly recomend it to any Belle and Sebastian fan.
