Boy With The Arab Strap (1998) ( )

Artist: Belle & Sebastian
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Product Summary
Label: Matador -- Dna --
UPC: 00744861031123
Release Date: 9/8/1998
Buy.com Sku: 60318607
Item#: MH6JG9
Format:  CD

Song Listing

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



 
Album Notes and Credits

Notes & Personnel Info
Belle and Sebastian includes: Stuart Murdoch, Stuart David, Isobel Campbell, Stevie Jackson.
Additional personnel: Gail Anderson, Claire Campbell, Eilidh Campbell, Euan Forrester, David D. MacKay, Sarah Wilson (strings); Ian MacKay (pipes); Neil Robertson (bass).
Recording information: Ca Va Studios.
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 the band 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.

Engineer: Tony Doogan

 
Compilation Appearances
Matador At Fifteen (w/ Bonus DVD)
Latenighttales
Back To The Bus
Juno
Juno:music From The Motion Picture(os

 
Associated Artists and Works
Storytelling ~ Original Soundtrack
Original Soundtrack
Original Soundtrack
LateNightTales ~ Various Artists

 
Technical Info
Release Date : 09/08/1998
Original Release Date : 1998
Catalog ID : 311
Label : Matador (record label)
Number of Discs : 1
Studio/Live : Studio
Mono/Stereo : Stereo
SPAR Code : n/a
UPC : 00744861031123

 
Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (9/17/98, pp.96-98)
- 4 Stars (out of 5)
- "...naive and fragile on the outside, tough with knowledge of obscure psychedelic pop records on the inside....the soundtrack to staying too long in your college neighborhood and becoming one of those types who hold down library jobs..."

Spin (10/98, p.140)
- 8 (out of 10)
- "...this...is a pastoral album whose minor accomplishments add up to tremendous power when heard as a whole. Murdoch and his disciples...refuse to do anything in broad strokes, which means nothing here wears out over repeated listenings, but that you also have to lean into the album to get much out of it..."

Entertainment Weekly (9/11/98, p.132)
- "...Murdoch can apparently make a witty yet heartfelt song of anything that crosses his mind, from a dirty dream...to turning down a record executive's invitation to dinner..."

- Rating: A-

Q (12/99, p.100)
- Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s."

  
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