I
I had never considered
the origin of the band’s name.
I googled that. Now I know
it comes from
a French children’s book
about a boy and his dog.
I wonder if Belle is the dog
or Sebastian is the dog,
and the reason for my hesitation
is the surprising placement
of the names in the title. Wouldn’t you
expect the boy’s name to occur
in the title before the dog’s name?
These things must be looked into.
Skipping through a cartoon
version of the story, I learn
that Sebastian is the name of a boy
with no friends, and Belle is the name
the boy gives a befriended wild dog,
because he is, after all, beautiful,
which is what the word “belle”
means in French.
II
Belle and Sebastian, the band,
are not French. They are Scottish.
I put on side one of Girls in Peacetime
Want to Dance. If you had asked me
to hum a single song from this
record, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,
but from the first notes of this album
the music is immediately familiar and
an immediate comfort. They can
rock, these guys and gals, but mostly
their music is a kind of salve
on the nerves, their jaunty little
melodies, their movement between
what sounds like folk music, something
my parents might have listened to,
to what might pass as disco in a nightclub,
and those clever, often narrative leaning
lyrics. They are superb at what they do.
But I wonder, as I listen, despite
the familiarity, why it kind of feels
like I’m hearing every song for the
first or second time. I catch on quickly,
but I can’t sing along. It must be, that
however much I liked them, I did not listen
repeatedly. Two previous albums
to this one, both of which I have on CD,
I know better, remember more vividly.
Are they better albums? These cats prove
to be surprisingly consistent. It might be
that the only distinction is that those CD’s
were the first Belle and Sebastian
albums I ever heard, and thus, I listened
to them more often.
III
They put models all over their
album covers–not fancy people,
regular people, everyday people,
mostly attractive everyday people.
I don’t know that they’ve ever
put a photo of the band on an
album cover. I’ve got the e.p.
box set, How to Solve Our Human
Problems. The album art is chock
full of photos of a bunch of good-
looking, multi-ethnic strangers.
There’s a full-size poster inside
with these large photos of people
who are not in the band. I’ve seen
pictures of the band. They are not
ugly people. Somewhere along the
line, very early in their career,
if not from the very beginning,
they decided, let’s not put ourselves
on the cover art–ever. They must
have agreed, unless one band member
was calling the shots, and he said,
or she said, we’re not putting ourselves
on the covers of our records.
I’m trying to understand the aesthetic.
Rock band as “everyman.”
That must be it. And as I listen
to the three short records in
this boxset, I’m thinking, yes,
this music is very good, and it is
a kind of music that is sort of
democratic to the core, in that
there might be something for
everyone here, provided they
like melody, super competent
musicianship, Scottish accents,
and records that are rarely if ever
difficult to listen to.
And you got to hand it to a band
that can write a good song
that’s nearly six minutes long
with essentially two lyric lines:
“Everything is now.
Everything is different, now.”
IV
What does one get in a boxset
of e.p.’s other than 15 songs
spread out over three 12 inch records
and a gigantic poster with photos
of people you can’t identify
unless you study the liner notes
for their names? Well, Stuart
Murdoch, the lead singer, has
written a long-ass autobiographical
essay in the liner notes, spread
out between the three album sleeves
of the three records. Years ago,
when I bought this boxset, I skipped
the essay. Today, I’m reading it.
It changes almost everything for the good.
Suddenly, I feel like I know this guy
and almost as suddenly I like this band
so much more than I did this morning.
And I have added this title to books
I’d like to read: by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso,
How To Solve Our Human Problems.
V
René comes in to the room while I’m listening
and she says, what’s this? And I say, it’s Belle
and Sebastian, and she says, it sounds old.
And that kind of nails it. Belle and Sebastian
sound like they are time travelers from the
world of 60’s pop music, and in a way, just
like me, they are. If you were a child in the
late 60’s, early 70’s, the pop music of the era
was inescapable, and if you had any inclination
to music, you could barely get away untouched.
The title of this last record of theirs in my collection,
A Bit of Previous, seems to call attention to that fact.
The Monkees, The Beatles at their most melodic,
Herman’s Hermits, Donovan, yacht rock–it’s all here.
Nearly everything this band does: a bit of previous.
My final thought, there are treasure here that,
for whatever reason, I let slip away.
Notes on the vinyl editions: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Matador Records, 2014, double LP. How to Solve Our Human Problems, Matador Records, 2017, 3-e.p. box set. A Bit of Previous, Matador Records, 2022.
michael jarmer 