(no subject)

This is a long shot, but is anyone in this community going to the concert in Vienna on the 16th of April? I have a ticket, but no one to go with, and meeting a fellow fan is always good fun.

Let me know!

Maddy xo

Write About Love LP

(Finally!!) got the new album...I'm a little late, I know...and I absolutely LOVE it! However, I picked up a sealed copy on vinyl and the sticker that denotes which side is which is on the wrong side (side 1 is really side 2), and there is a big scratch/scuff on one side. I was so bummed. It doesn't skip on my turntable, but I still don't like opening a brand new sealed record to find a scratch on it. I'm thinking of contacting Matador to see if they'll let me send this one back for a new one.

Does anyone else have this on vinyl? Are your labels glued to the wrong side too?  
Liz

Belle & Sebastian - "Trick or Treatin'"


This is a short little spoken interlude from a Belle & Sebastian show on Halloween in Minnesota in 2003. In it, Stuart and Stevie hilariously try to work out what "trick or treat" is. Stevie eventually gets it -- sort of. It's really funny. You should give it a listen.

Trick or Treatin' - Live at the Fitz Oct. 31, 2003

Also I finally got around to listening to "God Help the Girl" and I *love* it. I was very pleasantly surprised at how good it is.

chest music

hello, old friend

I rediscovered Belle & Sebastian yesterday afternoon. The early work -- the EPs*, Tigermilk, Fold Your Hands, Child (I didn’t get Sinister and Boy With the Arab Strap until later) -- the stuff that kept me alive (quite literally) through high school.

Listening to “Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie”, I could smell my high school car again. The sweet smell of plastic and carpet shampoo as the sun radiates through the windshield, stewing everything into a unique clean-sick funk. I was so neurotic about wasting gas, wasting money, that I would never turn on the air conditioner, except when it got so hot that I thought I was going to pass out. These songs make my skin prickle and my breath come short.

It took me 40 minutes each way to work, and I would listen to these albums over, and over, and over. For months, they were the only CDs I owned, and I wore them out. Singing along, crying along, hanging on deathly tight to the violins and trumpets so I wouldn’t go entirely crazy. I got stuck in a snowstorm, driving between Colfax and Pullman, one evening, and I sat for an hour listening to I Fought In a War on repeat, while snowflakes piled onto my windshield. I could have plowed on, I’m sure, but I didn’t.

I got all of these albums for my 17th birthday and all that year -- until the next summer, when I discovered that my discography might be sorely lacking in variety, and I branched out -- I listened to them. Until I knew every beat and every nuance, until I could sing all the instrument lines, until the words were so far ingrained in my skull that even today, 8 years later, I can sing them without thinking about it.

Hearing them again, after literally years of (I suppose you could say) avoiding them, was electrifying. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed them. And I didn’t know just how much of that scared 17 year old is still underneath this skin. Sometimes, I still feel her.



* 3, 6, 9 Seconds of Light
Lazy Line Painter Jane
Dog On Wheels (on whose cover model I had a ginormous crush)
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