Boy With the Arab Strap: Belle & Sebastian: Amazon.ca: Music

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This highly anticipated album from Belle and Sebastian arrives with every hope satisfied. Each song is a cunning short story that wraps itself around you like a cozy couch throw. The loose theme running through this 12-song reverie is seduction. It plays out in both the drowsy sexual hopes of principal songwriter Stuart Murdoch's idle protagonists and the giddiness of bandmate Stevie Jackson's "Seymour Stein" and "Chickfactor," which document his bewitchment by the city of New York and its beautiful girls and florid pitchmen. The complex arrangements favor a whimsical diversity best experienced in "Sleep the Clock Around," which features synthesizer bloops, trumpets, and bagpipes! If you haven't figured out that this Scottish eight-piece deserves every iota of hype it's receiving, it's time to have your ears checked and your record collection gone over by a certified professional. --Lois Maffeo

Product Description

Belle and Sebastian follow up the considerable promise of 1997's fantastic If You're Feeling Sinister with an album that is, unbelievably, even better. The Boy with the Arab Strap is an immediately infectious and delicious pastiche of fey, Nick Drake-ian vocals; lilting pop melodies; shimmery arrangements; croony wonder; and tortured, lit-smart lyrics. Belle and Sebastian are smarter than the Smiths, wittier than the Beach Boys, more fun than the Velvet Underground, and even more inscrutable than R.E.M. That's heavy company, but The Boy with the Arab Strap proves they deserve to be belles of the ball. --Tod Nelson

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Customer Reviews

142 Reviews

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

Average Customer Review

4.2 out of 5 stars (142 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful album, pure and simple..., July 4 2004

By

Shaggy (Sioux Falls, SD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boy With The Arab Strap (Audio CD)

When I sit at home on a lazy summer day (bored as usual) there's a certain album that I can just lie in bed and let it take me away into another world. This album is it. I was recently introduced to Belle and Sebastian through a friend, who was listening to their album Dear Catastrophe Waitress. I liked it quite a bit, and decided to explore the band further. The end result was that I found one of my favorite bands of all time. Each song on this album for me is pure bliss, through and through. Poppy yet complex, easy to listen to, and interesting lyrics, all combine together to form a band that is certain not to dissapoint.

Highly recommended

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good "Boy", Jun 14 2004

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E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Boy With The Arab Strap (Audio CD)

Eight-person band Belle & Sebastian prove that pop is not confined to the brainless bubblegum genre. The melancholy melodies of "Boy With the Arab Strap" show Belle & Sebastian at their peak, with their gently complex music and quietly restrained pop songs.

"Arab Strap" starts off with "It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career," an elusive, quirky little tune that builds up from near silence. Following it up is the almost-catchy, percussive "Sleep the Clock Around," the darkly beautiful title track, the wistful "Summer Wasting," the lulling "Seymour Stein" with its magnificently shivery organ, and finally it finishes up with the pretty, downbeat "Rollercoaster Ride."

Nobody makes the sad stuff any prettier than Belle & Sebastian. "Boy With the Arab Strap" is not quite perfect -- "Seymour Stein," despite its lyrical brilliance, has a forgettable little tune, and the lyrics vary wildly. But their work here is certainly enjoyable and beautiful, balancing out the sweetness, the humor, the melancholy, and the coffee-shop-poet dissatisfaction with life.

The songs brim over with vague unhappiness, an ethereal sense of how the world is full of misery. It's best shown in "Boy With the Arab Strap": Stuart Murdoch sings with deceptive perkiness, "Do you ever feel you have gone too far?/Everyone suffers in silence a burden..." Murdoch let the others do several of the songs for this album, which gives a vague, weird feeling of creative unevenness.

Stuart Murdoch does most of the vocals, and his murmuring voice seems perfectly suited to the songs. And the piano and shimmering violin are backed up by the keyboard, organs, jazzy percussion, delicate chimes and little sonic flourishes like a jet going overhead. One highlight is the delicious bagpipe solo in "Sleep the Clock Around," which completely dominates the music.

The dismally lovely music of Belle & Sebastian is in good, though not perfect form on "Boy With the Arab Strap." Best advised for those who dream of dark coffee-houses, and poetry that drips with loneliness.

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4.0 out of 5 stars The delightful daydream continues..., May 14 2004

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jessica (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boy With The Arab Strap (Audio CD)

Ok...So if you own beautiful precursor to this album 'If you're feeling sinister' you probably bought it at the start of winter and spent the next two months reading and humming along while riding on city buses for a hobby (to borrow a few words from our darling Stuart). Well, all you nerdy woolen-jumper-wearers, here is your album for spring, and possibly for summer too. 'Boy with the arab strap' lacks the lovely British-ness of '...sinister', but more than makes up for it with imaginative, pretty tunes and consistently brilliant lyrics. Of course it's all nice, but there's plenty that's, well, wonderful!!!!! 'Seymour Stein' is a glorious, mini-epic (I particularly love the line about the 'north country girl'!!!) and the title track is irresistable. I could gush all day, but instead will choose to highlight the thorn amongst a dozen roses which is 'A space boy dream'. Electronic music does not gel well with B&S's lovely lyricism (does anyone actually listen to 'Electronic renaissance' on 'Tigermilk') and disturbs the beautiful balance of the rest of the album. This minor quibble aside, this is a gorgeous album, and a must for all daydreamers, scrabble-players and bookworms.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars If this album were a girl, I'd marry her.
I have not been this happy with an album purchase in a long time. I first heard the song "Boy With the Arab Strap" about a month ago. Read more

Published on Mar 13 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Album
This is a superior album. Isobel's singing on "Is It Wicked To Care?" is really good, very simplistic and meaningful ("rusting armor for effect..."). Read more

Published on Mar 4 2004