Medialoper

We're Not Who You Think We Are

belle & sebastian

Certain Songs: Belle & Sebastian – “I’m A Cuckoo”

by

image

Album: Dear Catastrophe Waitress.

Year: 2003.

What an uplifiting romp this song is!  And totally unexpected.

While they’d put out a bunch of great EPs in the years surrounding and following the epochal If You’re Feeling Sinister, Belle & Sebastian hadn’t even come close to putting out an album as good.  And honestly, as the 21st century dawned, it really kinda seemed – for all of Stuart Murdoch’s formidable songwriting chops –  like they were just going to fade away into the twee sunset.

Then Dear Catastrophe Waitress came out, signalling – via their version of glam rock, of all things – that Belle & Sebastian were in it for the long haul, that they were going to change up their music as needed. That record is epitomized by “I’m a Cuckoo,” featuring twin guitars, joyous horns, shuffle beat, call-and-response vocals and a chorus that I will sing until the day I die.

I’d rather be in Tokyo
I’d rather listen to Thin Lizzy-oh
Watch the Sunday gang in Harajuku
There’s something wrong with me, I’m a cuckoo

That “Thin Lizzy-oh” followed by the Thin Lizzy guitar lick absolutely kills me every single time.

Official video for “I’m a Cuckoo”

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs: Belle & Sebastian – “If You’re Feeling Sinister”

by

image

Album: If You’re Feeling Sinister.

Year: 1996.

Normally, when something is absolutely perfect in its preciousness, I focus far more on the preciousness than the perfection. But not in the case of Belle & Sebastian’s wuss-rock classic If You’re Feeling Sinister, which I love almost as much as Love’s Forever Changes, which I’ve always seen as one of their key influences.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved this album – as epitomized by this almost-energetic title track – far more than antecedents like Prefab Sprout or Aztec Camera.  Not to mention, in 1995, after a half-decade of loud guitars, Belle & Sebastian felt nearly as radical of an indie-rock left turn as, say, The Chemical Brothers.

And just like The Chemical Brothers, this record gives me intense flashbacks of working at Organic Online in the middle of the dot-com era, when somebody (not just me!) would always seem to be putting this on the communal CD player that served as the soundtrack of building out the early websites for evil multinational corporations like Sony, Nike & McDonalds.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only person at that company who waited and waited for the genius chorus to finally show up as the song was half over.

But if you are feeling sinister
Go off and see a minister
He’ll try in vain to take away the pain of being a hopeless unbeliever

 “If You’re Feeling Sinister” on Spotify

 Pitchfork Oral History of Making of If You’re Feeling Sinister

My Certain Songs Playlist on Spotify

Every “Certain Song” Ever