Is this a brilliant idea or just silly?

Doesn't this mean they went along with him? I read it as a damascene conversion sort of thing. am i getting wrong end of stick?

[ah JTN nips in in time]

I have no doubt whatsoever that B&S will still suck, though.

I'm only signing up for the Trevor Horn experience if someone can promise me it'll sound more like Relax than The Power of Love. I would also like reassurance that he turned up in his Buggles outfit.

Eno never worked with U2 again after his diary came out (with less than flattering portrayal of Paul McGuinness). I think we can expect turbulence before Horn actually turns Belle and Sebastian into the Art of Noise.

Hey, we could write the diary of the recording session now, to save Stuart time later.

July 11th 2003: Trevor brought in some wax cylinders of Italian futurists like Marinetti and Russolo playing their bang crash wallop stuff. His idea was that we should sample them for the drums. We didn't like the idea much, but thought it would be great to record the whole album on wax cylinders.

He's a man with his head well inside the 21st century. He's moving from mechanical systems to digital ones, from the individual to the collective, from polluting to less-polluting vehicles, and (if you read the bit about his campaign to save the Kelvingrove Park Bowling Greens) from car parks to bowling greens. Truly an example to us all.

No. It is the behaviour of SUPERMAN.

or

[insert joke abt cuticles here]

That's the cherry on the cake, as far as I'm concerned. INSTANT SAINTHOOD!

"Oh look there at the back, a wooden tree, isn't it a pretty one?"

*checks Dollar site*

...man, you better be right about that claim of yours, Billy.

And Ivor Cutler's a jew. But who cares already, you gotta have a little chutzpah or else you end up a schlemiel, you know what I'm saying?

Belle & Sebastian are:
Stuart Murdoch – vocals, guitar, piano
Stevie Jackson – guitar, vocals
Sarah Martin – vocals, violin
Chris Geddes – piano, keyboards
Richard Colburn – drums
Mick Cooke – trumpet, guitar, bass guitar
Bob Kildea – bass guitar, guitar

Belle & Sebastian’s first album under the terms of their new deal with Rough Trade Records, ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’, is to be released by the label on October 13. And it’s not only the label that’s changed… Recorded with at-first-glance bizarre choice of Trevor Horn (Tatu/ABC/Frankie Goes To Hollywood) in the production chair, ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ emerges as the band’s best and most fully realised work to date.

It may be their fifth fully-fledged studio album, but – dripping with memorable pop moments and sumptuous arrangements - ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ is the first Belle & Sebastian record both able and likely to propel them beyond the realms of their ardent fan-base and out into the world at large.

Recorded at Hook End Manor in deepest Oxfordshire, and mixed in West London, ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ positively zings with West Coast summery hooks, tight, witty writing and striking melodies.

The surprise pairing with producer Trevor Horn came about by the slightly prosaic process of Horn approaching the Belles and them doing a meeting out of mildly piqued interest. Within minutes of talking to him, however, they were sold. It is important to note that the album represents something of a departure for the producer, as he reportedly normally only allows the talent into the studio to do the vocal and then layers on everything else personally in their absence.

‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ is still resolutely a Belle & Sebastian record, full of their trademark tender, joyous Scottish pop, but this record displays a newly-found confidence at the band’s heart.

So, the initially Clashy garage vibe of ‘Stay Loose’ is matched against non-sequiturial electro elements and duelling guitars to make an unlikely but riveting six minute-plus epic. Duelling guitars of another colour raise their necks in ‘I’m A Cuckoo’s intended nod to the genius of Thin Lizzy. But instead of Lynott’s (admittedly compelling) machismo we get Stuart’s altogether sweeter and reflective take on relationship disintegration, which is both funny and heartrending as fuck, and actually contains the couplet “I’d rather be in Tokyo / I’d rather listen to Thin Lizzy-o”.

“I was telling Stevie about my hopes for ‘I’m a Cuckoo’,” said Stuart at the time of mixing the album. “At one point I said to Trevor that I didn’t care about the other tracks on the record as long as we ‘got’ this one. I guess I wanted it to be ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ and ‘Make Me Smile’ and ‘Virginia Plain’ and ‘There Is A Light’ all rolled into one. And I’m just realising, it ain’t going to happen.”

But it is this thwarted questing after pop perfection, which keeps them driving forward. “I should learn my lesson, but then I never learn my lesson, and neither does Stevie. I guess if we ever learned our lesson we would lay down our tools and go boating instead. Do something else. But we’ve still got work to do. I can see the sadness in his eyes and he can see the madness in mine.”

“Pretty much if each track doesn’t bring me to tears with relief and pleasure combined, they don’t get on the record,” Stuart says. “I’ve got a pretty low tear threshold, it must be said, but at least you know it’s costing us something.”

‘Roy Walker’ combines 50’s rock-and-roll, flickers of free form jazz and amazing Beach Boys harmonies. Further good vibrations arise in the first single, ‘Step Into My Office Baby’, with its saucy lyrics about “pushing for a raise” in the work environment, and other similar thinly-veiled entendres about dictation and “taking down everything she said”.

Elsewhere, ‘Piazza, New York Catcher’ - inspired by Stuart’s deep love of baseball - asks question everyone else was avoiding asking by enquiring “are you straight or are you gay?” of the Mets’ legendary and somewhat “ambiguous” star. Interestingly enough considering the producer’s rep, it is the 4-track demo of this track you will be hearing on the record.

Title track ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’, meanwhile, somehow manages to shoehorn a ludicrously big orchestral arrangement into its two minutes of off-the-wall strangeness. Sarah takes lead vocal on her own ‘Asleep On A Sunbeam’, though car or heavenly light is never entirely clear. In ‘Lord Anthony’ the Belles deliver a song written by Stuart in the days before B&S, which has long been a mainstay of bootlegging fans across the globe, and here it finally gets the lush strings it has always deserved.

In the end, over-running and up against it, the mixing of ‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ was finished with Stuart in his pyjamas, since all the band’s clothes and possessions had been sent home to Glasgow when the session was scheduled weeks previously. Cabin fever must have begun to set in because working titles for the album listed at the time on the band’s diary included ‘Nazi Sinatra’, ‘Wanker’s Forest’ and ‘If You’re Going To Get Hung For Stealing A Horse, You Might As Well Shag It’.

‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress’ – album tracklisting;

Step Into My Office Baby
Dear Catastrophe Waitress
If She Wants Me
Lord Anthony
Asleep On A Sunbeam
I’m A Cuckoo

You Don’t Send Me
Wrapped Up In Books
Piazza, New York Catcher
If You Find Yourself Caught In Love
Roy Walker
Stay Loose

______________________________________________________________________________________

“It’s always going to be hard to put rich and abstract thoughts into words, but I suppose that's what I'm trying to do when I write a song. A good one at least,” says Stuart. “It starts with a feeling, just this odd feeling that springs up from nowhere, and I clumsily try turn the feeling into a song, because I want to pass the feeling on.

“I don't mean to claim that these thoughts are exclusive to me. I'm sure everyone gets them, and what people choose to do with them is unique and personal. Maybe you store them up, maybe you think about them when you're trying to get to sleep, maybe they're in your top ten daydreams when you're in a boring meeting and your eye is drawn to the window and the sky beyond.”
______________________________________________________________________________________

The first single,‘Step Into My Office Baby’, will be released by Rough Trade in November.

Following hot on the heels of the album, the band’s previous label Jeepster are to release an encyclopaedic DVD of their entire career to date (see separate press release).

Belle & Sebastian are playing three huge American shows in August ahead of planning UK performances for later in the year.

*August 19th, Prospect Park Bandshell, Brooklyn, NY.
*August 22nd, Greek Theatre on UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA.
*August 24th, Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA.

You mean it gets Ballerinas excited?

I am interested in hearing the Trevor Horn production.