Music Arcades: Belle and Sebastian: The Boy with the Arab Strap

One of those albums that I passed on at the time it came out but ending up buying years later on the strength of its reputation. But it doesn't add much to the furrow that B&S had already ploughed, to my ears, and the indie-pop in-joke references in Seymour Stein and Chickfactor are a bit too smug, no matter how self-deprecating they affect to be.

I saw Seymour Stein once, myself, since you ask. Purely by accident. I went along to this event at the State 51 warehouse, and for the first part of the evening, it was as barren and windswept as ever. Then, just as Tom Vek was due to come on stage, half the London music industry seemed to emerge out of the shadows. Seymour Stein is very short and, there being no such thing as a raised stage at the warehouse, I doubt he could see any Vek. He and his sidekick — cigar in hand, living the dream — looked to be dressed for the clubhouse of a Palm Springs golf course.

That's just to show that anyone can play the name-dropping game, if they stretch it a bit.

Anyway, now the consensus seems to be that If You're Feeling Sinister is the better album. Like Tigermilk, charming pop songs, but no cigar.