Guest –Sarah Sumeray
Who’s Sarah Sumeray when she’s at home?
I should probably put my profession here which is comedy writer and VoiceOver but the truth is, when I’m at home I’m pretty much just an avid Dorito consumer.
Sarah’s Top 3 albums ever?
Michael Jackson – Bad
Kate Bush – The Whole Story
The Beatles – Abbey Road
What great album has she never heard before?
Tigermilk by Belle and Sebastian
Released in June 1996
Before we get to Sarah, here’s what Martin of Ruth and Martin’s Album Club thinks of Tigermilk
During the making of Tigermilk, Belle and Sebastian’s debut album, guitarist Stevie Jackson turns to Stuart Murdoch and says -
“Not another song about school kids?”
Murdoch, aware of what he’d been through to get to that point, possibly aware of what was going to come next, simply replied -
“You’re either with me or you’re not”
He defined the band with that comment.
Seven years before, prior to all the “what he’d been through to get to that point” stuff, he was a 20 year old student, throwing himself into university life with energy and enthusiasm in equal measure. When he wasn’t studying, he was organising student discos; when he wasn’t leading the party you’d find him on the athletics track, or in the boxing ring.
As I said, energy and enthusiasm.
He’d also become a massive fan of The Smiths and Felt (the band, not the fabric).
It’s tempting to assume that the next move for the industrious Murdoch, possibly after graduating, would have been to form a great indie pop band, with an illusory French name, and take over the world. Either that or become a relatively successful Scottish boxer who would do ok, win a few fights, but then lose to someone from Mexico with tattoos.
But he did neither.
In his prime, with his life ahead of him, he contracted M.E.
He then spent the next 7 years virtually housebound, mostly lying in bed, switching between the opposite states of boredom and exhaustion.
From life to nothing, overnight.
Worst of all, for Murdoch this was a permanent state. You’re reading this now, or you’ve read the story somewhere else, and you know that ultimately it wasn’t. That this period in his life has an end, it’s finite, and eventually he goes on to form Belle and Sebastian. But for him, day after day, month after month, this was it. He didn’t know the ending. As each birthday passed in his 20s, he didn’t know the ending.
So, in a state of arrested development, he pursued the only option open to him - he started to write a load of brilliant pop songs on the family piano, half an hour here, half an hour there, before he’d get tired and have to go back to bed again. But at least he was communicating, if only with himself and his memories.
“Not another song about school kids?”
It was all he knew, all that he remembered. It was either that or a load of songs about lying in bed wishing he didn’t have M.E. Not sure there’s a market for that to be honest.
In time, a long time, he starts to get better, starts to have more energy, and at 27 years old he re-enters the world with a collection of songs that he had written whilst he was away. He also gets a pair of plastic trousers and a bowlie haircut. He wants to be noticed, he’s the same age as George Harrison was when the Beatles broke up and he’s just starting out.
He’s in a rush for the first time in years.
An unlikely hero now enters the story - John Major’s Conservative Government.
After years of signing on and receiving benefits, the dole office told Murdoch that he had to attend a “Training for Work” course or fend for himself. Amongst the list of courses available (Engineering, catering, hairdressing etc) there was the terribly named Beatbox - a course intended for out of work musicians to become familiar with the music industry and practice on equipment they couldn’t otherwise afford. Despite its terrible name, an obvious attempt to appeal to “yoof”, Stuart Murdoch signed up to it and met his first recruit - Stuart David.
Stuart David says the first time he met Murdoch he was wearing a jumper with a teddy bear on it. Of course he was.
The two Stuarts formed a bond, though, and went into the course’s studio to record demos of Murdoch’s housebound songs, including an early version of Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie. It was on hearing that Stuart David knew his new partner was a force to be reckoned with and not just a man in his late twenties with a teddy bear jumper.
It was starting to come together.
But they needed another unlikely hero to take them to the next step.
Enter Stow College in Glasgow.
Stow offered a similar course to Beatbox, but for music management students rather than the long term unemployed. Glasgow was covering all its bases it would seem. As part of the course, the students at Stow had to choose a demo from a local band, record an EP, and release it on their in house label - Electric Honey.
As luck would have it, a member of staff on the course was a drummer and ex professional snooker player called Richard Colburn who was sharing a flat with Stuart David. He’d heard the demos coming out of Beatbox from the two Stuarts and put them up for consideration for that year’s project.
And that’s how it happened - the beneficiaries of botched capitalism. A training scheme for the long term unemployed collided with a college course that ran a record label and Stuart Murdoch’s songs rose to the top. There was only one issue - the songs were so good, and there were so many of them that the college decided to release an album instead of an EP.
With a deadline to hit, Murdoch then got a move on recruiting the rest of the band - a process he described as similar to putting The Magnificent Seven together, but considerably more tedious.
What he does is actually remarkable though. Turning the normal process on its head, I.e. working with people he actually knows, he seeks out a bunch of strangers who will provide the accompaniment that he has already envisaged. When he comes to recruit Stevie Jackson as the guitarist, he does so by letter - a series of missives sent from his house trying to convince the reluctant guitarist to join. Eventually he relented and replied that he was in. Murdoch was right, that never happened in The Magnificent Seven. Yul Brynner never wrote a load of letters to James Coburn, he just asked him and he thought “why not?”
Meanwhile, when Murdoch wasn’t following unsuspecting musicians around Glasgow, he’s still adding to his collection of songs. Towards the end of 1995 he writes a song about a boy called Sebastian (presumably Murdoch) and a girl called Belle (presumably no one at this point).
On New Year’s Eve he meets Isobel Campbell, a songwriter and cellist, one of the few instruments Murdoch had yet to recruit for his project. She tells him to call her “Bel”, everyone calls her “Bel”. Romance and fate not being lost on Murdoch, he recruits her and finally settles on the band’s name - Belle and Sebastian.
The line up now complete, the band goes into the studio to record the album - Tigermilk. Actually, I use the term “band” loosely here because if anything they’re more like an orchestra at this stage, with Murdoch in the role of conductor. All these songs, this seven year daydream, were being realised and the entire album took just 5 days to record - such was the clarity of his vision and the talent of his new found associates.
It’s remarkable really that Murdoch got it so right at his first attempt, that the gang of strangers he brought together was the right gang of strangers.
1000 copies of the album were released by Stow College’s label - enough to get the attention of the music press and a bunch of record companies eager for the band’s signature. They sign to Jeepster and record their next album in 7 days - If You’re Feeling Sinister. It’s released in November 1996, just 5 months after Tigermilk.
Two great albums in less than six months – a total recording time of 12 days. He really was in a rush.
What’s followed since their breakthrough has been an endless struggle for ownership and definition.
Sections of the music press, who weirdly assumed they were part of the project, have vilified the band for making it clear that they weren’t. What followed was the inevitable tantrums and name calling from English journalists who couldn’t write a shopping list without trying to evoke the “spirit of ’76”. And even those that were trying to be nice often resorted to casting Belle and Sebastian in a role that served as a shortcut for the author, as much as the reader - shortcuts that often misrepresented the band.
You don’t have to parade “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” to prove you like sex, drugs, and rock and roll. You don’t have to go on Soccer AM to prove you like football.
And if it’s not the press, it’s us, the fans - appearing simultaneously as a comedy sidebar and defenders of the faith. It’s all hair clips, and pinafore dresses, right? Well it is for me. Maybe you should try it. It might be for you too.
But, yes, we’ve been precious at times. Some of us. At times. A consequence of being the last great band before the Internet, before networks and communities brought us together, has led us to believe that Belle and Sebastian are OUR band, that we discovered them on our own without the help of EVERYTHING. And of course that’s fine, but it’s always worth remembering the band got their first. So when they refuse to be the Belle and Sebastian of 20 years ago, when they shift gears, it’s not a big deal. Sometimes it’s felt like it has been and we’re as much of that “ownership” problem.
Tigermilk celebrates its 20th anniversary next year and it’s incredible that the band are still around to mark the occasion. 20 years after a project for a college course, led by a guy that had spent years in bed. No one, not even he, could have seen that coming. And even though members have come and gone, they’re still a working unit and producing moments of brilliance. They’re still writing songs today that you’d include on any 15 song “Best of”. There aren’t many bands that have lasted 20 years that you can say that about.
In the imaginary list of “top 10 bands ever” that I occasionally daydream about, they’re probably in the top five and sometimes in the top one.
But the last word.
It goes to my friend Rich, one of those Belle and Sebastian fans you hear about. He once said, almost embarrassed, as if he was talking in inverted commas, that Belle and Sebastian “spoke to him”.
We sort of laughed, stopped talking about it, and then did something predictably male like make a list of their EPs in descending order of quality.
But really there wasn’t anything else to say. He’d said it. In three words he defined Belle and Sebastian in a way I understood, better than anyone had since Stuart Murdoch had provided the best definition the band ever had -
“You’re either with me or you’re not”
Martin Fitzgerald (@RamAlbumClub)
The Critics on Tigermilk
Pitchfork gave it 8.4 out of 10
NME didn’t feature it on their top 50 albums of 1996.
So, over to you Sarah. Why haven’t you listened to it? WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?????
There’s a lot I could list that’s wrong with me but let’s stick to my reasons for having not listened to this album.
Musically, 1996 was a magical year for me. The Spice Girls released their first album and to be honest, that was my main focus for at least the next three years. To say it was an obsession is to trivialize it. My passion for them consumed my life, to the point that I got temporarily kicked out of school for refusing to not wear my knicker exposing union jack mini-dress to lessons.
So this is what I was into and my awareness of other music was pretty much nonexistent, although I did make some much needed time for Hanson when they released their nonsensical classic MMMBop.
My taste in music wasn’t very refined and I won’t blame you for judging me.
Later into my teens, my dad made the effort to introduce me to artists he loved such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and of course, The Beatles. He’d make me memorize what instrument each Beatle played and if I got it wrong, he’d send me to my room to re-learn it. His slightly sadistic attitude to getting me to appreciate the Beatles could have backfired horribly, but as it happens, I got hooked, totally immersed. Their albums were able to take me on a journey I’d never been able to experience with the somewhat insignificant bubblegum music I’d been into in the past.
I found this kind of music effortless to listen to and that’s always been my preference when it comes to music – I want something I can instantly ‘get’. There were certain indie bands that were huge in the 90s, that I actively avoided out of fear that I’d be judged for struggling to understand what other people were getting out of them; bands such as the Stone Roses, Primal Scream, The Strokes, and…Belle and Sebastian.
Now let me make clear that I had never listened to a single song by Belle and Sebastian up until two days ago. All of my preconceptions were pretty much based on other people mentioning them and maybe on seeing some posters put up around Camden advertising their latest album, but my assumption was that they were a sweet little whimsical band that didn’t have much to offer me, and so I never made the effort to give them a chance.
Well, I say that, but the real reason is that I refused to listen to them in protest over the fact that they’re not actually a collaboration between two of the greatest Disney characters of all time.
You’ve now listened to it, at least 3 times, what do you think?
On the first listen, I have to admit that my inital thoughts about how I’d feel listening to Tigermilk were confirmed.
I wasn’t feeling much. I tried out various movements in an attempt to enhance the experience – some foot tapping, head bopping, moonwalking, but all to no avail. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mindset for it; after all, I was in a bad mood after having just been informed that Tesco had run out of my favourite Tomato and Marscapone pasta pot. But I soldiered on through and by track 9, I was starting to feel some sort of connection.
The second listen a day later felt different. Possibly because I had already familiarised myself with the album, possibly because my appetite for a pasta pot had been satisfied, but I was certainly enjoying it more. I think in general, I feel I have to know some of the lyrics to a song to fully enjoy it, otherwise I feel a bit lost. I find comfort in knowing exactly what the ‘story’ is, and on my second listen, I was more at ease in this sense. In fact, I looped track 9 three times. That’s how much I was starting to enjoy it…
By my third listen, I felt pretty chummy with Belle and Seb. I knew what they were about and I even felt a little guilty about all those strong preconceptions I’d had about them. I was kind of frustrated that I’d blocked them out for so long. It hasn’t changed my opinion of them DRASTICALLY but whereas in the past I would insist you get your indie toss away from me, I now get why you all love Tigermilk.
I get it.
Would you listen to it again?
I’ll have to now because I downloaded the album to my iTunes and I can’t remember how to delete songs.
A mark out of 10?
7.5
RAM Rating – 9
Guest Rating – 7.5
Overall – 8.25
So that was Week 42 and that was Sarah Sumeray. Turns out she’d never listened to Tigermilk before because she was too busy listening to MMMBop by Hanson instead. So we made her listening to it and it turned out she preferred INDIEPop after all. See what i did? No, you fuck off mate.
Next week, Moose Allain listens to something from 1971 for the first time.
Until then, here’s The State that I’m In from Tigermilk
Enjoy
Ruth and Martin
xx
