Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 12/12/05
Label: iTunes download

Without wishing to shovel any further snow on the blocked and blizzard-gripped drive of Brian Wilson's mind, the Beach Boy must take some responsibility for this. Because it was surely with Wilson's magical series of "Pet Sounds" shows in London three years ago that the fad of performing entire classics became an accepted modern phenomenon. Since then, we've gone from the sublime - Love's "Forever Changes", "Fun House" by The Stooges and Wilson's own "Smile" - to the ridiculous - this summer's "Don't Look Back" series featuring Dinosaur Jnr, Lemonheads and probably Ned's Atomic Dustbin.

Part of that programme and eminently more worthwhile than many chosen, was Belle & Sebastian's "If You're Feeling Sinister". First released in 1997, at a time when Oasis held sway on the UK music scene like the Kray twins stopping the delivery of fresh fruit to the masses during a kind of rock'n'roll blitz - the fag end of Britpop - this record was utterly out of time. Like a lost Love album written by Morrissey, Belle & Sebastian became cherished overnight, as this live recording from the Barbican in September attests.

Perhaps the exact opposite of Iggy's infamous molestation of "Fun House" in August, which reportedly saw a stage invasion of Jesus & Mary Chain proportions, the end of this show highlights exactly what it is we're dealing with here. Before bolting closing track "Judy & The Dream Of Horses", frontman Stuart Murdoch invites "The Kids" who've been grooving in the isles, to "add some movement" at the front. Said kids, naturally, oblige politely and gleefully.

Belle & Sebastian have apparently never felt happy with the original album and judging by the lavish, striding strings drawn onto this performance you can see their point. "Fox In The Snow" and the title track, in particular, benefit from the elegiac orchestration fame, money and hindsight have presumably afforded the band. Not that you need an awful lot of money to make these songs sound any better. In fact, it would take a producer of stupefying klutz and total deafness to ruin "If You're Feeling Sinister".

The belief that with this record Belle & Sebastian planted themselves in the same shy, bookish, rather frightened ground as The Smiths is magnified here. But beyond Murdoch's cute, camp and forlorn tales about bicycles, "kissing just for practice", the iconic swoon of Bob Dylan on camera and bursting into tears at the end of films, there's something more significant shining through. Rolling in the harmonica-soaked drive of "Me And The Major" and cascading piano of "Seeing Other People", this is typified in Murdoch's winning claim on "Get Me Away From Here" that "nobody writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me."

This is, once again, an utterly complete album. And one that, incidentally, Belle & Sebastian have never bettered. It seems we have yet another thing to thank Brian Wilson for.

    by Ben Gilbert