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Live appearances were rare, too, the band playing eight shows in 1996 and 12 the following year. When Belle and Sebastian signed to indie label Jeepster, it was on the condition that they wouldn’t be expected to release singles, promote their records or speak to the press. In fact, in 1996 they were nigh-on invisible. A cerebral antidote to the bombast of Britpop, they refused to submit to the demands of the music industry.
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Not since The Smiths had a British band inspired such fervent devotional fandom, and those fans were further enraptured by the fact that Belle and Sebastian did it all their own way. A guitarist since his early teens, who cut his teeth on pop classics by The Beatles, OMD, The Police and ABBA, his melodic hooks are the perfect foil for Murdoch’s ageless romanticism on an album Rolling Stone described as reaching “peaks of effortless pastoral grandeur”. The song is king.” Self-confessed as “one of nature’s sidemen”, Jackson is a subtly illuminating presence throughout Sinister’s 10 songs. It’s about creating a sound and telling a story, and Sinister, that’s why it’s so successful and people love it. The Glasgow band’s softly spoken guitarist Stevie Jackson summed up the 1996 album’s gently immersive appeal and Murdoch’s narrative brilliance, when he told the Pitchfork Classics documentary, “As usual Stuart’s miles ahead of all us. READ MORE: Public Service Broadcasting – Bright Magic review: the most varied and cerebral of the band’s records.Suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and forced into a life of isolation, Belle and Sebastian’s introverted genius crafted a catalogue of melancholic bedsit chamber pop and some of the most deftly drawn observational writing of the modern era for their second album, If You’re Feeling Sinister. In the first half of the 1990s, songwriting became Murdoch’s “reason to exist”. When Stuart Murdoch confesses in The Boy Done Wrong Again, “All I wanted was to sing the saddest songs, If you would sing along, I will be happy now”, it’s from the heart.