Product Description

After 1997's IF YOU'RE FEELING SINISTER made them critics' darlings, Scottish octet Belle And Sebastian ran straight into a series of label woes, and into the inevitable feeding frenzy that surrounds a free agent with their prodigious talents. Their experience with one label exec is detailed in "Seymour Stein" on THE BOY WITH THE ARAB STRAP, which finds theband building on the pastoral pop charms of SINISTER, adding a palpable layer of anger and an increasingly rich sonic palette to their painfully shy tales of despair.
Near-overnight success taught the band a lot. This album moves from their trademark confessional diary sketches (still in abundance, as on the disarmingly naive "Is It Wicked Not To Care", and the tender "Rollercoaster Ride") to genuine social criticism, as on the title track, a narrative meditation on Britain's pretensions and societal ills. "Chickfactor" pulls apart the banality the band encountered on arrival in New York, an experience which only served to deepen the bashful anger that makes Belle and Sebastian so endearing.

Track Listing

1. It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career
2. Sleep The Clock Around
3. Is It Wicked Not To Care
4. Ease Your Feet In The Sea
5. Summer Wasting
6. Seymour Stein
7. Space Boy Dream
8. Dirty Dream Number Two
9. Boy With The Arab Strap
10. Chickfactor
11. Simple Things
12. Rollercoaster Ride

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1635 in Music
• Released on: 2000-09-01
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
This highly anticipated album from Belle and Sebastian arrives with every hope satisfied. Each song is a cunning short story that wraps itself around you like a cosy couch throw. The loose theme running through this 12-song reverie is seduction. It plays out in both the drowsy sexual hopes of principal songwriter Stuart Murdoch's idle protagonists and the giddiness of bandmate Stevie Jackson's "Seymour Stein" and "Chickfactor", which document his bewitchment by the city of New York, its beautiful girls and florid pitchmen. The complex arrangements favour a whimsical diversity best experienced in "Sleep the Clock Around", which features synthesiser bloops, trumpets and bagpipes! If you haven't figured out that this Scottish eight-piece deserves every iota of hype it's receiving, it's time to have your ears checked and your record collection gone over by a certified professional. --Lois Maffeo

From Amazon.com
Belle and Sebastian follow up the considerable promise of 1997's fantastic If You're Feeling Sinister with an album that is, unbelievably, even better. The Boy with the Arab Strap is an immediately infectious and delicious pastiche of fey, Nick Drake-ian vocals; lilting pop melodies; shimmery arrangements; croony wonder; and tortured, lit-smart lyrics. Belle and Sebastian are smarter than the Smiths, wittier than the Beach Boys, more fun than the Velvet Underground, and even more inscrutable than R.E.M. That's heavy company, but The Boy with the Arab Strap proves they deserve to be belles of the ball. --Tod Nelson

Customer Reviews

A classic and by far their best
Full of poignant, hummable tunes. They have never bettered this.
If you like catchy music buy it.
I am listening to Sleep the Clock Around now. Absolutely glorious. Especially when the synth solo bit kicks in, and then just when you think it can't get any better - bagpipes.
The current crop of British indie bands would sell body parts to write stuff like this. Belle and Sebastian would probably sell body parts to write more stuff like this.
A true classic.

Dappled Sunlight
Offering a gentle alternative to the rampant Oasis and Blur dominated lad culture of mid-90s Britpop, B&S's rather lovely The Boy with the Arab Strap contains a dozen catchy pop songs of nostalgia, adolescence, inadequacy, innocence, longing, desire, endless childhood summers, and odes to the joys of generally lazing around, sung with fragile voices mostly to a low-fi backing of acoustic guitar, piano and soft snare one-twos.

But this is no ordinary disposable pop; It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career starts the album with the line "He had a stroke at the age of 24", and we realise these are not songs you're likely to be singing around the campfire despite the accessibility of the simple nursery rhyme like melodies. The wistful and sometimes surreal lyrics will appeal to fans of Morrissey or Nick Drake, and conjure up romantic images of colourfully dressed bohemians reading French poetry outside coffee houses on a sunny day.

Best of all is the infectious hand clapping title tune where singer Stuart Murdoch mischievously changes the lyrics to "You were laid on your back, with the Boy FROM the Arab Strap", a nod to fellow Scotch indie-band named after said item of bedroom-wear!

8/10. 'Ease Your Feet In The Sea'
On first inspection the Amazon's favourable comparison to the Smiths and the Velvet Underground seems a little generous. And while the lyrical concerns bear resemblance to those of Morrissey and Stuart Murdoch's vocals make for a less smokey Nick Drake, Belle & Sebastian don't quite reach that songwriting bracket. Nevertheless, the Boy with the Arab Strap is a real grower, and after a few listens its melodic hooks start to catch. They excel at making music so seemingly light and effortless gradually leave its indelible mark on the heart and mind. Bleak stories of everyday failure and regret add a bitter taste to the unflinching prettiness of the music. Stuart Murdoch and Isobel Campbell aren't quite the odd couple of Lou Reed and Nico (or even Morrissey / Marr) but they make revisionist pop as dreamily saccharin as the Velvets.

'It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career' marries the Velvets' prototype dream-pop with Nick Drake's jazzier sensibilities, the folksy acoustic guitar slowly embellished with piano and alt-country tinges. 'Sleep the Clock Around' builds sweetly shimmering electronics and piano around a delicate melodic refrain. Swelling into a blissful synth and trumpet driven finale, this is where my Belle and Sebastian preconceptions went out of the window. 'Is It Wicked Not To Care' features Isobel Campbell on vocals and summery, breezy orchestrations. Despite the relative lushness of the musicianship on songs like this, it always feels loose and spontaneous, never top-heavy or over-produced. 'Seymour Stein' is like the Velvets' 'Pale Blue Eyes', with some lovely summery organs, piano and horns. 'Space Boy Dream' begins with a cryptic spoken-word sample and turns into a jazzy instrumental David Axelrod would be proud of. 'Dirty Dream Number Two' has a propulsive stomp and nice upbeat horn arrangements, reminiscent of Nick Drake's Bryter Layter.

While the invariability of the mood and the lack of vocal range can make the it a little samey, it is a gorgeous and uplifting record all the same. I was expecting something much more fey and brooding than this but it is really quite a revelation. If you like this you might like Feist's 'The Reminder' or Lambchop's 'Nixon' as well.