by laura
b&s do not make anyone puke, (except steven wells of the nme - read his review of 'johnathan david' for a laugh) but they still manage to be all those synonyms of adorable, plus more that the thesaurus hasn't even heard of. Example: if you went to see a b&s concert and it consisted of nothing more than stuart murdoch sitting on a stool in the middle of an empty stage with his back to the audience, bashing his head regularly against a pie pan, it would still be charming. and adorable. et cetera.
'how,' you may ask, 'can anyone willingly submit themselves to this level of cuteness and still survive?' good question.
the answer has something to do with attitude and something to do with brilliant lyric-writing and something else. attitude: they're cheeky. (i love that word! so just a warning - i'm going to use it a lot.) dickens-ish as that might sound, they really are. i learned this first-hand at the concert i went to. they swear! they make fun of the audience! (and they audience deserved it - they were stupid!) stuart murdoch went up to the balcony to yell at stevie for not giving him a long enough cigarette break! (the result of this was a brilliant cover of the stone roses song 'fool's gold', which was not as adorable as it might have been because stevie brought a guy in a stone roses shirt out of the audience to sing the lyrics and he did them unbelievably badly. and he danced.)
plus, how can you consider b&s to be cuter than a newborn kitten when they have songs like 'dirty dream number two' and countless lyrics that newborn kittens (not to mention my mother) would certainly blush at? their lyrics are brilliant, and cheeky, and almost always contain some deeper meaning which is not entirely innocent, or even close to being innocent. almost every song has some interesting gender twist which has prompted linz to decide that they're all bisexual. except that they rarely mention sexuality at all! i can hardly think of more than two songs which even come close to mentioning the word 'sex.' instead, the aforementioned brilliant lyric-writing and buckets of cheekiness allow them to imply without really saying anything and to be suggestive without actually suggesting anything. i'm in awe.
the something else which makes b&s great and not nauseating is, not surprisingly, something that i have no idea how to describe. just take my word for it, okay? they'e great. and although i've liked them for a while, i've not really loved them until the concert i saw on saturday 15th september. they are unbelievably amazing in concert. aside from the setlist, which was utterly fab (they played 'legal man'!!!), what made it wonderful was probably part of that indefinable something. stevie's dancing is beyond belief. (as is stevie himself - he's so endearingly awkward and dorky) stuart didn't dance much, to my disappointment, but he did a bit of 'bip-bopping' on the piano bench and moving about with a tambourine, and i got the impression that if he ever decided to cut loose and bust a move (yup, i just said 'bust a move,' get over it.), it would be, well, adorable. this is because stuart is quite possibly the most adorable man in the universe, even approaching the cuteness factor of ewan mcgregor's character in 'little voice,' except stuart's cheekier.
i want a wee stuart of my own!!! i want belle & sebastian to live in my garage* and play me great songs every day!! i. . . fuuuuuuuck!
sorry. no, i'm not steven wells from the nme, i'm just someone who's just discovered that her 'tigermilk&' has an alarming scratch on it. right, i'm off to buy a new one then!
*re: the garage: please see laura & linz's house
