Belle & Sebastian on the West Coast.

IT'S been four years since the Glasgow indie rock band Belle & Sebastian came to America. I remember that show, in which they were accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in part because of its sheer wonder. Also, because my wife and I were such fans we left our newborn son -- less than a full month old! -- to see the group. (Yes, we got a sitter.)

Belle & Sebastian of course, are a band that mixes a gift for melody with instrumental harmonies that recall classic West Coast rock. Their early songs often resembled folk rock or chamber pop; some of their more recent stuff, and their new record, Write About Love, are funkier and more expansive. Either way they are great live, and perhaps the greatest indie pop band since Pavement broke up.

HERE is my piece on the group before their '06 Bowl show.  It begins this way:

When they started out in the mid-'90s as a project for a college business course, the group of Glaswegian students who called themselves Belle and Sebastian tried to keep things low-key. They named themselves for a French children's TV show, played gigs in churches and libraries, shunned the media and pressed only 1,000 copies -- on vinyl -- of their debut album.


I'm sure I'm not the only reader of The Misread City looking forward to the band's show Sunday night at the Hollywood Palladium.  

Camera Obscura and the Glasgow Sound

EVER since i first heard lloyd cole and the commotions at an impressionable age, i've been crazy for scottish rock n roll and especially bittersweet music of glasgow. it's one of the finest legacies in rock music history, putting supposedly sophisticated cities like san francisco and boston to shame. only, i think, portland, ore., and manchester, uk, have better batting averages. (i'm overlooking quarterflash here, btw.)

one band that both exemplifies glasgow's tradition of melody and intelligence (heard in glaswegian bands as different as the jesus & mary chain and teenage fanclub) and fights against its associations is camera obscura, whose new LP just came out. HERE is my interview, which advances a US tour and will run in various metromix papers around the country.

they are tired, TIRED of being told they sound like belle & sebastian, but if you cant wait for the new LP by stuart and the boys waste no time in picking up "let's get our of this country" or "my maudlin career." here's a video of the new single, "french navy," a song that begins "in a dusty library" and then travels the world.

i spoke to traceyanne campbell, the band's singer and songwriter, about music -- she grew up loving patsy cline, and her grandfather cried when roy orbison died -- as well as her own depression and how she deals with it in music. (i think of donne's line about "grief brought to numbers.")

(serious glaswegians will know that the wonderful "country" record began with "lloyd, i'm ready to be heartbroken," video here, an answer song in to cole's early "are you ready to be heartbroken?" i was pleased to hear from campbell that cole's work is still a major part of indie culture in glasgow and that bars and clubs play his stuff readily. more on cole's music in another post.)

as for camera obscura, they'll be in LA, at the henry fonda, on june 11. as i say in the interview, their show last time around was surprisingly extroverted and fun.