(I consider their three EPs called "How to Solve Our Human Problems" released in 2017 and 2018 as a de facto album and thus not eligible for this series. By the way, I suggest pretending the first EP doesn't exist and enjoy the other two. The first one is disco/dance music and is a failed experiment, in my opinion.)
Anyway, back to the music here. Belle and Sebastian had their heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when they put out about an album a year (or the equivalent in EPs and singles and such). They've gradually slowed down since then, and lately only put out a new album about every four years or so. Partially, this is due to them spending more creative energies on solo projects. (That's reflected here, with eight of the 13 tracks not being credited to the band.) But they still put out very good music when they put their mind to it, either solo or as a band.
Surprisingly, a good portion of this album stars Stevie Jackson. He generally has only written and sung the occasional song. But this time period includes the release of his one and only solo album so far, and it's a very good one. So I've included a few songs from it, but also a couple of songs he performed around that time but strangely didn't include on the album.
Unfortunately, the amount of Isobel Campbell I've included has gone way down. From 2007 to 2013, most of her recorded music has been in the form of duets with Mark Lanegan. While interesting, I find it's vocally dominated by Lanegan, and too far from the Belle and Sebastian sound to merit inclusion, aside from the occasional track without Lanegan. Since 2013, she apparently ended her musical collaboration with Lanegan, but hasn't really released any new music at all.
Belle and Sebastian leader Stuart Murdoch has much less of a presence on this album than on previous compilations. He only sings lead on five of the songs here.
By the way, I do have more material from the band to post, in the form of live music and other things. That'll come later.
01 Pure of Heart (Stevie Jackson)
02 Richie Now (Stevie Jackson)
03 Bird's Eye View (Stevie Jackson)
04 Crash (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Try Me (Stevie Jackson)
06 Walk Away (Isobel Campbell)
07 Don't Hang That Picture on Me (Stevie Jackson)
08 Paper Laced with Gold (Stevie Jackson)
09 Invisible [Instrumental] (Stuart Murdoch & Isobel Campbell)
10 Born to Act (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Two Birds (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Piggy in the Middle (Belle & Sebastian)
13 A Politician’s Silence (Belle & Sebastian)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15602489/BellenS_2011-2015_BrdsEyeView_atse.zip.html
For the cover art, I used a poster from Belle and Sebastian's 2015 tour. Since the poster is rectangular, I shortened the height of the flowers.
Do you consider Stuart David's work with Looper as fair game for these Belle and Sebastian collections? A song like 2015's Images of the Shipwreck would seem to fit well on this one.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. I must admit, I haven't checked out Looper. I looked them up and listened to some of their stuff, and I got the impression that it's all either electronica instrumentals or David doing his talky thing over a bed of music. I'm more interested in proper songs with melodies. I hear that Looper does have some of those, especially on their 2015 album, but I'm too lazy to go through all of their stuff. If you know of any songs that would be worthy of any of my Belle and Sebastian stray tracks albums, please let me know. I listened to "Images of the Shipwreck," and it sounds like another one of those talky things and not really a sung song.
DeleteHello -- It looks like the mega link above goes to zippyshare, fyi.
ReplyDeleteThat's odd. But I think I fixed it now.
DeleteYou did indeed. Thank you.
Delete