Unwell Bookish British Teens
I saw Belle and Sebastian at the newly resurrected Brooklyn Paramount this week. It’s another old re-purposed movie palace like my beloved King’s Theater, and right across Flatbush from Junior's if you're in the mood for cheesecake afterward. Until recently it was a basketball arena for Long Island University, which must have been a wild place for sporting events:
One word of warning: the only seats at the Paramount are on a narrow and forbidding-looking balcony that seems to be VIP-only, like the one at Warsaw, but the concrete floor slopes just enough that sightlines are better than at Brooklyn Steel or (ugh) Terminal 5. You need to be up to your neck in the sea of humanity to enjoy the show, so prepare accordingly if you're still COVID-averse. I didn’t wear a mask at the show which seems like… something?
Anyway, it was a fun. They opened up with The State That I Am In, and I embarrassingly gasped aloud at the sound of his voice, which sounds just like it did on cheap headphones in my mid-twenties. They closed with Sleep the Clock Around, which again, sheesh, emotional time warp. I also enjoyed the crowd’s inability to agree on a group-wide reactions. Someone would occasionally attempt to get a clap-along going, and it never lasted more than a single verse. My cohort! I so rarely get to be among them.
Many people seem to dislike this band in a very strong way. The word “twee” is tossed around, as well as the term “sad bastard music”. Not everyone wants their pop songs to come from impish Scots in fisherman's sweaters, I guess.
I would forgive you for being annoyed by a band is named after a French cartoon, and I might also sympathize if you find their vibe insufficiently socialist or unappealingly caucasoid. Pitchfork notoriously (obnoxiously) panned The Boy With the Arab Strap, but did a re-do later. This sentiment, as so many are, is best expressed by Jack Black:
To me this reaction is just baffling. You’re really telling me that his voice doesn’t sound appealing to you? A lot of people don’t like cilantro: a fair opinion, probably based on genetics as much as anything, but I don’t have whatever chromosome that is. I’ve never enjoyed Taylor Swift, but I’m not like, mad at her fans about it.
You can call it sad bastard music, but I rarely find these songs sad. Sometimes they are, but more often they’re not especially serious, snarky but wistful, romantic, occasionally vicar-faintingly horny. Sometimes they are about a very specific baseball player. Sometimes there’s a disco vibe, even. It’s more Frankly Mister Shankley than Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now. I loved this song at the show, which may as well come from a different band entirely.
To me this is a sub-genre, bigger than a single band. It’s not sad bastard music, it’s Unwell Bookish British Teen music.
The features of UBBT include:
- A whispery vocal style lifted from Nick Drake, with an un-disguised British accent.
- A mid-sixties pop style and overall vibe, with a solid backbone of Pink Moon, The Association, and a soupçon of Puff the Magic Dragon.
- Song titles containing first names and commas. See Camera Obscura's Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken.
- Generally from some British Isle, but there are colonial practitioners. Alvvays come to mind. Destroyer counts as UBCT. Beck has made whole UBAT albums.
Here's the Unwell Bookish British Teens playlist! Spotify and Apple versions are available for your pleasure. Or if you hate this shit, keep hating I guess.
Puzzle Korner
Can you find all of the Jakubowiczs hidden in this picture? There are more than you might think!
Non-Recipe Recipe Zone
Stray Links
Gary Shteyngart’s NYC Martini Tour. He gets to do this for a living? I’m glad he had a lousy time on that cruise ship.
There was also apparently a Belle and Sebastian cruise, and they seem to have enjoyed themselves, so who’s the sad bastard, really?
