Belle & Sebastian - Dog on Wheels - Non-Album Tracks (1994-1995)

I'm a big Belle and Sebastian fan, so expect to see a lot of their stray material posted here.

As I usually do, I want to start by going back to the beginning of the band's career. This album shares the same title as the band's first E.P., released in 1995. But that's only half of it.

Stuart Murdoch, the leader of Belle and Sebastian, had chronic fatigue syndrome in his late teens and early twenties, before he started the band. That's when he began songwriting, and apparently he wrote many, many songs that have never been released. However, four of them have leaked out on bootlegs, so those four start this album out.

The first song, "Rhoda," is the only one here credited just to Stuart Murdoch, because it dates from before any version of Belle and Sebastian was formed. Note that I made an edit. In the middle of the song, there was an instrumental section about ten seconds long that was full of annoying clicks, no doubt from a scratchy vinyl album. Strangely, there are few to no significant clicks before or after, just that one section in the middle. I tried using Audacity's click remover function, but it didn't do anything. However, there was nothing important going on in that short section, and I realized I could edit out those ten seconds, so I did. Trust me, you're not missing anything.

This album is fairly short, only 31 minutes. But I want to stick to chronological order with my various stray tracks albums, and the next bunch of songs are from 1997. (The band is well covered in 1996, because it released two albums that year.)

Oh, I should mention that the four songs from the "Dog on Wheels" album were demos that were recorded in 1995, but only released in 1997, after the success of the band's two 1996 albums. I'm much more interested in when music was made than when it happened to be released, so I'm considering them 1995 songs here.

One more thing. The song "The State I Am In" is also on the 1996 album "Tigermilk." But this is the demo version, and I figure it's different enough from the album version to merit inclusion.

01 Rhoda [Edit] (Stuart Murdoch)
02 Hurley's Having Dreams (Belle & Sebastian)
03 London Has Let Me Down (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Pocketbook Angel (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Dog on Wheels (Belle & Sebastian)
06 The State I Am In (Belle & Sebastian)
07 String Bean Jean (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Belle and Sebastian (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15252561/BellenS_1994-1995_DgonWheels_atse.zip.html

The cover uses the picture of the "Dog on Wheels" EP, except the color has been changed and the text changed.