POLLercoaster Ride - ILM Artist Poll #94 - Belle and Sebastian - Discussion/Campaigning Thread

http://i65.tinypic.com/ne886b.jpg

I suggested this yesterday and much enthusiasm was observed. No-one vetoed the idea, and no other poll has been proposed for a little while, so I guess this shall be #94! Thanks for the thread title, kornrulez6969!

(i) TOP 30 TRACKS

The B&S discography now seems large enough (upwards of 170 tracks) to warrant a ballot of 30 selections. I'll accept any track by B&S or any side projects (God Help the Girl, Gentle Waves, Looper, etc) and lists <30, if preferred.

Here's a quickly assembled list of known B&S tracks, for starters:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1djccwNwnBjzQ3ESbclZF4-GiFtdIu7jqBxCmtcQmydg/edit?usp=sharing

I propose a fairly familiar scoring regime:

40,36,33,30,28,26,25,24,23,22,21,20,19,18,17,16,15,14,13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2.

Unranked ballots of 30 are also fine -- 17 points allocated to each item.

(ii) TOP 5 ALBUMS

Any of the regular studio albums or compilations are acceptable. I'll keep the scoring simple here: 5,4,3,2,1.

(iii) TOP 5 EPs

B&S have keen on the EP format at various points in the career, so an optional exercise to assess their relative merits might also be amusing. I'll keep the definition fairly broad: any of those releases containing 3-5 tracks. Scoring as at (ii).

Ballots to vaticanroulette AT gmail DOT com, preferably with username and helpful B&S-related subject line. :)

Deadline: let's aim for provisional deadline of 10th December with scope for extension if required. I'll attempt brisk turnaround after that, being mindful of encroaching festive/EOY distractions, etc.

very excited for this, I haven't really listened to them much in years (Jens Lekman has been my go-to for that sort of indie pop recently) but revisited their first two today in anticipation for this and they're still total classics

I need such an incentive to finally absorb some of the most recent stuff myself, tbh!

oh fuck

Spotted three tracks missing from the list - early demos 'London Has Let Me Down' 'Hurley's Having Dreams' and 'Pocketbook Angel' (not that I want to vote for any of them, but just for the sake of completeness / general pedantry)

I'll be stanning for some of the late stuff for sure. tbh most of their best material is DCW and onwards imho

I'm all for pendantry, CAAL! Shall add.

What about the Avalanches remix of “I’m a Cuckoo” (the one with the yodeling)? Does that just fall under the regular vote tor “I’m a Cuckoo”?

the Avalanches remix of I'm A Cuckoo is the greatest

As it happens, on Friday I already listed which albums you need.

That Avalanches reworking is quite remarkable, but I'm inclined to add all variants to the one 'pile' for tallying purposes. Happy to record details of cited versions though.

Just noticed that 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds of Light is also missing.

Thanks! Personal top 5 contenders are on that, fercrissakes!

What do people reckon about PTBBOTS / Songs for Children? One song or two?

first draft of ballot: 47 tracks

Great thread title!

Having a They Might Be Giants poll followed by a Belle and Sebastian poll is basically This Is Your Life for me.

I'm one of those who's kind of fallen off the bus in recent years, off to relisten to the newer records I know less well...

here for this

I am kinda shocked at the enthusiasm here tbh. Things done changed on ILM. I mean, there's some serious vitriol on older threads from Ned, Doc C, Dan Perry, many other longtime posters:

Search And Destroy: Belle And Sebastian
Belle and Sebastian: CorD??
fuck belle & sebastian?
when, exactly, did belle & sebastian start sucking?

anyway I always thought they were great up through Fold Your Hands, which is abysmal, and I haven't heard a note since.

dear catastrophe waitress is as good as any of the classics

also idk a lot can change in seventeen years lol

what are you talking about, I am exactly the same

anyway I always thought they were great up through Fold Your Hands, which is abysmal, and I haven't heard a note since.

You're missing out on some fantastic music.

DCW was such a seismic shock to me that it took a few months for me to say, "Okay, this might be their best."

All those old threads are well into the period where lots of people were ready to be bored with Belle and Sebastian. If there were a 1998 thread it would be barely alloyed fankidism.

yeah i almost said something similar

love that there's a side poll for best EPs--B&S is the band that taught me what an EP was lol

Not listened to the back end of Tigermilk for so long. We Rule the School just made me bawl. (I'm sick; I'm never sick - Brad was right: they're perfect.)

And, not seen it mentioned yet, but Seymour Stein will be top 5 for me.

same, most likely.

Belle and Sebastian - The Model >>>>> Kraftwerk - The Model

I’m getting sick rn so this works out perfectly. I’ll probably have “I Know Where the Summer Goes” on my ballot, lovely song.

Will be voting in this, which gives me a cause to finally acknowledge my most glaring blind spot: Dear Catastrophe Waitress. I can sort of understand how I missed it: Fold Your Hands... let me down when it came out, and I skipped right over it (ditto the Solondz soundtrack they did, though that is obviously less essential). Less understandable is that I never went back to it, as The Life Pursuit floored me when it came out, and is still my fave B&S album. I’ve heard “Step into My Office Baby” and the Mike Piazza song, but the rest of the album will be new to me.

dangit, i want to get sick. i'm missing out

tbh a few songs on DCW annoy me pretty strongly, though the highs are incredible

Roy Walker is a bit of a stinker.

I assume "Push Barman..." does not count as an album?

XP: I never need to hear *ducks* "Step Into My Office, Baby" ever again, but I distinctly recall being all "YES! Exactly the right move!" upon hearing previews of "Stay Loose" and "I'm a Cuckoo" after the dead end of Fold Your Hands....

And Push Barman is fine for the albums poll, as far as I'm concerned. Likewise Third Eye Centre and the BBC thingy.

i think it'd be a lot of fun to listen to this band chronologically so i'm gonna give that a shot while assembling my ballot

a few years ago i made a playlist of all my favorite b&s songs and i think it flows really well for being 50 songs long https://open.spotify.com/user/unbornwhiskey/playlist/4EvRvOmaS4T7qjh6kEkJjI?si=_cwi_GFdRRS-SE82nZSgFA

XP: I never need to hear *ducks* "Step Into My Office, Baby"

Yes. I'm going back to Dear Catastrophe Waitress for the first time in years and it's way better than I remember, after the first two songs which will not be on my ballot.

fair warning, im gonna vote for their cover of The Boys Are Back in Town as my #1

ok i won't, but it certainly might make my top 30

I've never heard that but I feel like I can imagine exactly what it sounds like (and it rules?)

i'm halfway through tigermilk and this is gonna be a tough poll

you guys are nuts, dear catastrophe waitress starts strong stays strong

i guess that's why we do the poll!

first run-through of my ballot has 8 songs from sinister on it...

First run through is 34 songs and nothing post DCW. I need to do some listening (and could do with some recommendations...).

Yeah I both a) want to give a fair listen to post-DCW material and b) don't really know how to cut down DCW and before to 30 songs...

I Want the World to Stop from Write About Love and Play For Today from Girls in Peacetime stood way out to me on those moderately disappointing albums.

'to be myself completely' is peak stevie imo

Could we please be objective cause the other POLLS are queuing up behind us.

― Alba, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:39 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a thousand times this

I did not like "Jonathan David" until around the 37th listen. I was DJ'ing when it came out, and upon playing it without previewing, my first reaction of "what is this mess?" The logic of its 37 sections makes perfect sense now. At first it felt like a trailer for Forever Changes.

"Jonathan David" in the top 10 for me

'to be myself completely' is peak stevie imo

yup, the only stevie track that made my ballot

I just sent a revised ballot if you dinnae plug in my first ballot from 2.5 hours earlier

In 2001/2002 I found a bunch of rare B&S (or pre-B&S) on audiogalaxy. I remember a cool cover of a Spanish song with a title something like mina ména (obviously way off). I also remember a cool 6-7 minute instrumental number.

one night extension here as well, just got in from work travel.

Are you sure it was them? I seem to remember there was a lot of mislabeled stuff on Audiogalaxy.

xpost

mina ména (obviously way of

Was it this Os Mutantes cover?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGfT3qg6p_Y

yes

Looks like a consensus is emerging re thread title. Nice!

FlopsyDuck: I was asleep when your emails arrived, but revisions are easy either way. Actually, I'm still happy to adjust week-old ballots if others want it.

campreverb: rightio!

Amusing that I initially said that "I thought there was mainly antipathy [to B&S] on ILX, but it seems that's not necessarily the case." With a few ballots still promised we might even approach...50.

Way before my time on ILX but I understand that there were a sizeable group of ex-Sinister people on here, enthusiasm on one side led to a backlash from others, an unspoken truce was declared where nobody talked much about b+s because it was still contentious and anyway people had moved on, and then after another decade and a half here we are

This is... much harder than initially thought. About 80% done, already pushing 40 tracks.

Ok, nearly done but almost forgot that I know one of the people in their songs (friend of SM's wife). Here he is dragging her out to dance on her eponymous song around 3:20:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XIWLMgXJBY

Better angle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vazADLsUSiQ

mad how much i love that song but still couldn't fit into a top thirty, what a catalogue!

Ballot submitted!!! I didn’t think I had it in me.

Awesome! But was that emailed? I don't seem to have received anything half an hour later...

got it...just need to clean up for the poll runner.
cutting to 30 was brutal. surprisingly found I like the weird stuff like a century of elvis/beyond the sunrise.

i like beyond the sunrise too (although it should have been placed on an ep, i think, because it doesn't really fit in with anything else)

i'm going to finish up my ballot tonight. i'll probably be one of those lame ones that stick mainly to the earlier material, but i did discover/rediscover several newer songs through this poll that will make it as well!

Fun fact: The love has been fairly well distributed in ballots. If you leave aside some of the film score snippets and the demo-only stuff, the pre-hiatus material that HASN'T yet received any votes seems to amount to one (!) album track and a few mid-00's b-sides. And the coverage is only slightly patchier post-2010.

speaks to the amazing depth of their discography

voted! (hopefully)
"The Rollercoaster Ride" moved up my rankings every time I looked at it, eventually landing in the top 5.

I also voted! My ballot mostly is mostly filled with earlier stuff, but I did include some tracks from the past few albums. I never really made it through Human Problems though.

i still haven't voted, i still am very sorry, and i still promise to get my ballot in today

Okay, I think we're just waiting for Karl Malone and Van Horn Street now. :)

I need to go out for perhaps six hours and then I've have a look at how things are going. Any other ballots that might arrive in that period will be happily tabulated too, of course.

Incidentally, if anyone sent one at any stage and didn't get a reply, then something has gone awry!

sent!

i kept dropping "dylan in the movies" down a bit during the long piano solo in the middle of the song, but then bumping it back during the "If we all went back to another time / I will love you over" section

so uh, does anyone know a band that has instrumental twee that sounds like belle and sebastian? or even a soft voice on top of chamber music that sounds like stuff belle and sebastian could of made?

Nick Drake?

Camera Obscura?

Damien Jurado?

commercials for health insurance for dogs?

SM literally produced Camera Obscura, so

The Left Banke.

about to send!

^ Which makes it...50 ballots!

that's so great! I haven't participated in a lot of these polls, but that seem like a lot

So psyched for this

Voted!

Room for one more?

Yep!

Also: did Van Horn Street survive his/her exam?

So excited to see the results of this. I voted early, without listening back to any of their music. Ever since I've been on a nonstop B&S listening kick, listened back through all of it. There's definitely some songs I should have voted for, but no looking back.

^ Similar here. I was just thinking before that my most persistent earworms this week were things like "Poor Boy", "Come On Sister", "Didn't See It Coming" and "Power of Three", none of which were even close to being on my list. They could probably sustain a career on their second and third tier songs alone.

Okay, I'll start closing this now.

I'll take what I have to be the final numbers for the albums and EPs (the order, at least, looks to be quite stable now anyway) and get that ready for the countdown thread. I might be able to start that as early as late evening, my time. (Perhaps midday GMT)

If Van Horn Street still has a tracks ballot to submit, hopefully I'll see that in the next few hours.

Results thread:

Could we please be objective cause the other POLLS are queuing up behind us - Artist Poll #94 - Belle & Sebastian - RESULTS

"she's losing it" is a song about me imo

i KNEW this song was a root