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Todd Solondz' follow-up to his successful Happiness is the self-reflecting Storytelling. Belle and Sebastian were asked to do the soundtrack to Solondz' new nightmarish movie. At first, the second part of the movie - it's split into two halves - would be for the bunch of popsters from Glasgow to fill. Then the first part was up for grabs too... and then it wasn't. Music for both parts was written, but only six minutes of tunes for the second half of the movie were eventually used.
So Belle and Sebastian's Storytelling is full of put-aside film score tunes, leftover themes turned into songs, but in the end it's more or less the long-awaited follow-up to Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, right? ... Well, it is, and it isn't. It sure isn't a real soundtrack, more like half a film score, and the album, after all, is being released as a Belle and Sebastian album and not as the official soundtrack to Solondz' movie. The songs on Storytelling kind of reflect both of these dimensions.
Storytelling is a "soundtrack" in the traditional sense of the word. It's not a collection of cool tunes by big artists, but an integral soundtrack that fits the scenes of the movie. Roundabout two-minute instrumentals get alternated with soundbites from the movie: "What do you want to do with your life, what kinda long-term goals can you possibly have?" - "I wanna be on TV, maybe have a talk show or something," plus some full-on songs. The instrumentals are all well-orchestrated and reflect certain moods, but they are, in the end, a bit all too alike. The atmospheric instrumentals are built upon harmonica, playful piano-playing, strings, horns, and sighing background vocals. The opener Fiction gets a total of three different treatments (including Freak and Fiction Reprise). In the end, the scene-based instrumentals all are a bit more of the same. Fuck This Shit is an exception though, with its cheeky western feel. It’s like a Burt Bacharach, over-the-top-but-fun-anyway, song. But these instrumentals obviously are not what you had in mind when thinking of Belle and Sebastian. The six vocal songs, though, are exactly what you might expect from the band. Black and White Unite is a lazy Belle tune, sung by Stevie Jackson and Stuart Murdoch with beautiful group harmonies. The title track - sung by recently departed member Isobel Campbell - is a kind of classic pop approach. It's like Dirty Dream #2, but somewhat more simple. This song won’t leave your head for a few days after hearing it. Murdoch's typical irony comes around in I Don't Want to Play Football, which just about nears the 60-second mark and for that matter leaves you a bit unsatisfied. ("I don't understand the thrill of running, catching, throwing / Taking orders from a moron [...] Sugar, I'd rather play a different sort of game / Sugar, the girls are just as good as boys at playing.") Consuelo Leaving is the instrumental reprise of I Don't Want to Play Football, which starts off normal, but turns all Latin on us. It's one of the standout instrumental tracks, and it's these refreshing changes that the other instrumentals lack. They're decent songs, but a bit too MOR. Jackson's Wandering Alone - the clap-along song at the recent gigs by the band - is probably the best one he's written until now. You know those songs that just pop up in the middle of the day? Well, this is one of them. "... Senorita ...": Another soundbite leads us towards the end of Storytelling. ("She's just a spoiled White girl with a Benetton rainbow complex" is all about the character Vi, who wrote a story about her Black teacher having a go at her.) Scooby Driver is a Sixties sing-along that's also just about 60 seconds. Waaaaaah! We would've loved having more of this! It seems we're getting the Guided By Voices treatment here. Fantastic melodies served especially for you, but not longer then a minute. Fiction gets a reprise, yet again. Big John Shaft sees Murdoch more or less criticising Hollywood. This funky-White-kids soul song kind of reminds one of Lenny Kravitz' It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over: an excellent song again and the longest on the album, it lays in line with the work on Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant. The instrumentals on Storytelling seem to have more to do with the movie than the vocal songs. And it's because of these typical Belle and Sebastian songs that the boys and girls will be buying it. And they should. Apart from the bonus instrumental songs and the soundbites, Storytelling is essentially a brilliant mini-album.
http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/belle-and-sebastian/storytelling/1598/
Meer Belle and Sebastian op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/belle-and-sebastian
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