I Could Be Dreaming: the Belle and Sebastian song-by-song, album-by-album thread

We Were Beautiful - 2.8/5

Not a fan of the verses or the change but the chorus is ok

 

B & S's first use of the drum & bass rhythm? Yet paired with pedal steel guitar and harmonies. Lots of different sections.

I ordered this album (on CD) and it came a few days ago and I've listened to this song a few times since. One time it really annoyed me, the other times I quite liked it. And I see that a couple of years ago I put it on a Spotify playlist of B & S songs from the later albums that bear further examination. So I must have heard something in it then.

I'm going with a 4/5 for now.

 

An excellent track - one of the album highlights: 4.5/5.

 

We were beautiful

yep, thats what I expected from modern day Belle & Sebastian

love the drum sequencer and the vocal melodies in the verse and chorus

BUT the keys on the chorus are a bit to high-pitched, which keeps it from being a fiver

4/5

 

I likes it. 3.5/5. The first phrase the bass plays reminds me a lot of something else, but I can't think what it is.

 

"We Were Beautiful" has a very catchy chorus, almost too catchy, as sometimes really catchy melodies that become earworms can end up being irritating, so I like this in small doses. The verse is not so great but I do like the bridge and also the addition of a trumpet (come back Mick I miss you).

4/5

Sorry I missed "Sweet Dew Lee" yesterday. I think it sounds like 2 songs stuck together when the change to Stuart's singing arrives, and I prefer Stuart's part to Stevie's verses, although Stevie's choruses are ok, mainly because he sings them in tune. 3/5

 

We Were Beautiful: 4.5

A very well-crafted pop song, the bass intro is a great way to pull you into, it's got a lot of different melodic parts, including some sort of pre-chorus, a middle eight, and some other kind of bridge after the middle end (You were not too old to change...) before it goes back to the chorus... it's almost trying to be too clever for what it is - like, HEY LOOK AT ME I KNOW HOW TO WRITE A POP SONG!

The single edit drops the "kind of bridge" after the middle eight and thus has a jarring transition around 3:06-3:10. I like the full-length track better.

 

We Were Beautiful 4/5

 

I feel like the verses don't match the chorus, though they aren't bad or anything: it's just that the chorus is such a sweet rush, that the slight melancholy resignation of the verses feels just a tad off to me. I do notice the many pieces of the songs, it is really very strongly crafted.

4.5/5

 

Our votes for "We Were Beautiful"

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Average: 4.03

 

Today's song is "Fickle Season" credited to Belle and SEbastian and produced by Belle & Sebastian and engineeredby Emily MacLaren and Stuart Evans. Mixed by Kristofer Harris. Lead vocals by Sarah Martin.

Lyric.

Leo Abrahams: guitar, synth
Emily MacLaren: percussion

 

The first weak track on the album for me. It's OK, but not particularly memorable - 3/5.

 

Agreed, it’s a pretty anonymous track and in an odd way sounds more suited to the GHTG soundtrack.
Which as song 3 of a 4 track EP is fine, but if taken as an album, you don’t want the third song to be weak (*stares at Beyond The Sunrise*).
2.8

 

One of those very wispy Sarah songs. At this point the album, or EP, is feeling a lot like a compilation. 3/5

 

Ouch, Sarah sounds tired.

1/5

The only way this song could be good would be with splendid vocals, which are not the case here, even the backing vocals sound off.

 

Fickle Season 2/5

 

Isobel Campbell just called. She'd like her voice back, please. Inconsequential. 2/5

 

Fickle Season: 2

(Yawn)

One of the most plain and boring track they have recorded.

 

It does remind me of an Isobel Campbell song -- sweet, pastoral, lots of recorders and violins...and a rather dull melody.

She is a better singer than Isobel, though, even if she sounds a little hoarse here. That's a shame: I agree that for this song to really work it needs a stronger vocal.

I really do like the instrumental passage but otherwise I feel I'm being harsh when I give this a 2.5/5 but that's what I'm giving. With a really strong vocal I would probably go a bit higher.

 

I respectfully disagree. Isobel is, marginally, the better singer. But neither of them has a really strong voice; and they're both better suited to doing backing harmonies in my humble opinion.

 

I suspect "Fickle Season" is a Stuart song and maybe Sarah's limited vocal range/style is better suited to her own songs because she writes them that way.

In common with many songs from the last album and this project, this one feels too long (even though it only lasts 4 minutes). But I do like both the verse and chorus melodies, if not the singing style and overall pace of the song.

3/5

 

Fickle Season - Seems to be Sarah Martin lite in a way. The pieces are there...the flute, the glacial vocal, chimes etc...but it's not doing enough to get a 3. Agree with comments about the vocal...sounds tired and disinterested.

2.5/5

 

Our votes for "Fickle Season"

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Average: 2.38

 

Today's song is "The Girl Doesn't Get It", credited to Belle and Sebastian; produced by Belle and Sebastian & Brian McNeill; engineered and mixed by Brian McNeill.

Lyric.

Dave McGowan: bass
Brian McNeill: clavinet, electric piano

Note: here's an excerpt from a Spin article that mentions this song:

The new collection brings a renewed sense of social interest, particularly as the band touch one their most explicitly political lyrics to date. From “The Girl Doesn’t Get It,” a song from Part 1: “They’ll take profits over people / They will make the country great again / Just as long as it’s white and ugly.” The phrasing echoes a certain inescapable American nationalist slogan, but the context is British, Murdoch explains. He was inspired by a viral photograph of counterprotester Saffiyah Khan, the young woman who faced down an angry member of the far-right, anti-immigrant English Defense League at a Birmingham street protest last spring. “She was just sort of cheerful in the face of these aggressive ugly men that didn’t want her to be there,” Murdoch says. “Someone just snapped a picture and it seemed [like], ‘That’s the Britain we want, that’s the Britain we don’t want. That’s the hope, there’s the reality.’”

Unpleasant realities are knocking, even at the doors of a band as famously insular as this one. “My wife’s American, and she put it quite succinctly,” Murdoch says. “She’s like, ‘You know? I think people are still shocked that we had a black American president for those years, and they’re just now reacting to that, and middle America is still reacting to that, they couldn’t believe they ended up with that.’ Back in Britain we have Brexit, and all these older people are coming out and still talking about the war, and they might as well be talking about the Empire. It’s all so lost in time, and who cares, really? You know, they’re just clinging on to these prejudices, and they’re all going to be dead, and it’s not doing us any good at all.”

Belle and Sebastian: Politics and Religion | SPIN

 

And the album is back on track! I find the production a bit busy, but it's so driving and catchy I'll give it a 4/5.