If all music artists of longevity have a good book in them, then Belle and Sebastian are more bookish than most - something that’s always been present in the band’s lyrics of course - wry observations of everyday life, spun into song in a way that seems natural and effortless, though is really the result of hard graft and fine craft.
How many bands can you say that you’ve enjoyed more in words than music? I’d previously enjoyed the work of Glasgow’s Belle and Sebastian more from two excellent books than the group’s records. These books are Stuart Murdoch’s entertaining diaries ‘The Celestial Cafe’ and Stuart David’s superb account of the band’s formative year ‘In The All Night Cafe’.
Along with those books, it was a listen to the band’s latest offering ‘A Bit of Previous’ that had me intrigued to thoroughly anticipate and enjoy a chat with Stuart Murdoch. Belle and Sebastian’s 10th full studio album is a joy - an example of a band of longevity (in this case 20 years) enjoying and expressing yet another creative peak. Yet it is also different from their previous albums - more driving pop, ‘big’ choruses and a good dose of blue-eyed soul thrown in for good measure. That’s the remarkable thing about longevity - bands with as much about them as Belle and Sebastian are bound to pick up new fans along the way, and meanwhile their frighteningly loyal fan base ‘the Bowlies’ will always follow them.
‘A Bit of Previous’ was meant to be recorded in California in the spring of 2020, but that plan was thwarted by, guess what? If, as Stuart Murdoch’s liner notes for the record suggest “Corona probably came 46th in the list of entities most influential in the writing of this record” - then surely the pandemic loomed large over how the record was eventually made. Towards the end of 2020 Murdoch & his merry band (there are seven of them) abandoned the notion of going to the US and instead converted its own rehearsal space in Glasgow into a makeshift studio and got to work, with unhurried resignation.
How full circle can a band come? That aforementioned Stuart David book gives a vivid account of Belle and Sebastian’s very first recording sessions at Cava Studios on the edge of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park way back in the mid 90s, which happened as a result of them winning Beatbox, a competition funded by the Department of Employment. Their prize was three whole days at Cava to record a song. Murdoch was determined to use the allotted time to record an entire album though - the end result being the band’s debut Tigermilk. That first album was originally given a limited release of just 1,000 copies by Electric Honey, Beatbox’s associated record label (the album was subsequently re-released in 1999 by Jeepster Records). Of course, the deal was to have a limited print of CDs, but again Murdoch insisted on vinyl.
Those changes of plan have been Stuart Murdoch’s modus operandi since the inception of Belle and Sebastian and I was curious to find out just where that self-belief came from. His answer was suitably self-effacing, and charmingly vexed:
“I got really ill with M.E., but roundabout that time I had spiritual feelings as well - so illness, god, and discovering I could write songs. That was like a lifeline to me, so I’m not sure it’s self belief but more determination. I was just determined to use my time - because of my illness - in a focused way”.
Yet Murdoch’s approach throughout the evolution of Belle and Sebastian has remained eccentric. Never to be influenced by the attachments of commercial success (the band has had only minor hits but have plenty more accolades including a BRIT and Ivor Novello) they have instead, as the saying goes, ploughed their own furrow, whether that be choosing to be a maiden signing for an unproven indie label (brushing aside far bigger suitors) or putting own their own festival aboard a cruise ship on the Med. Without a doubt, longevity is a far greater possibility if a band is driven by single-minded, quixotic decision making.
“We’re lucky in that we never really had hits, so no label was ever pressuring us in that way. I wish we had some of that pressure in a sense. I’m never comfortable, I’ve been bitching, in a semi-comedic way, since 2003 about why we can’t be bigger than we are”. But once you have a following, no one can really knock you back”.
Belle and Sebastian’s 10th album A Bit of Previous is available now on Matador Records