Stuart Murdoch's Lyrics: Search and Destroy

Some favourite lines:

"Everyone suffers in silence a burden / The man who drives minicabs down in Old Compton / The Asian man with his love-hate affair with his racist clientele"

"Listen Johnny / You're like a mother to the girl you've fallen for / And you're still falling"

"With my face head down just staring at the brown formica / It's safer not to look around"

The kissing just for practice stuff

"Listen Dear, I've been watching you lately / And if I said all these things you would hate me"

"The vicar or whatever"

"In the queue for lunch they take the piss, you've got no appetite / And the rumour is you never go with boys and you are tight /So they jab you with a fork, you drop the tray and go berserk / While your cleaning up the mess the teacher's looking up your skirt"

and above all these days:

"I reminded myself of the words you said when we were getting on"

But it doesn't really work like this. Many of my favourite lyrics come out of the song as a whole rather than quotable lines. And of course, they're not supposed to be read but heard.

I'm a sucker for story songs. I like lyrics about characters who have names and jobs and do things with other characters like "Walk on The Wild Side" or "Stan" or "Jack and Diane" or "Frank Mills" from Hair. There are so many songs that just talk about You and Me and They, there's something that grabs your attention about having a 3rd person narrator. I think Murdoch does this really well.

"The disenchanted pony...circus boy is lonely" couplet is pretty cringe-worthy.

"I love the rat that lives under the floor and makes his home from novelettes "

First N quote = line stuck in head that made me want to listen to TBWTAS a second time.

As I have given up listening to them for lent quoting lyrics to myself is my only salvation, mainly the thrush/Boots bit from Lazy Line Painter Jane and the rest of that verse of The Model.

what are you on about now?

Seymour Stein- I've been lonely I caught a glimpse of someones face It was mine and I'd been crying

I just looked at their site on jeepster and some of the lyrical mishearings are kind of funny.

And I call her String Bean Jean because the label on her jeans says
Seven to eight years old - well that's pretty small...

Favourites:

pretty much all of String Bean Jean.
The second half of This Is Just A Modern Rock Song

Clunkers:

Nice day for a sulk / The girl smells of milk
Cause I'm here in a cage / With a bottle of rage
The words to Legal Man are pooh - its no wonder that's the only release that doesn't include the lyrics

g - Seymour Stein was written by Stevie Jackson

At least that's how I *think* it goes ;-)

While Dan and I would look lovely together, this would still not achieve our dream of Stu destruction.

'nice day for a jam/ The Fall, Manfred Mann/ 's Earth Band'

They're not as good written down, are they? You end up thinking why did I like that? Best taken as a whole, I'd say. I'm not all that keen on the 'Walk on the Wild Side' with dinner ladies instead of junkie whores scenarios. 'Flagging down an aeroplane' was the last straw for me. But as Simon Bates would say, it's so easy to criticise, not quite so easy to find something positive to say. Theyr'e all great songs, but they don't hold up well to dissection. I don't suppose anything does. I don't mean to sound so negative.

Oh shit, that was by someone else.. Sorry.

"Big pockets for the pharmaceuticals it takes to fix her bwane."

2. Miller - you're hilarious as ever.

3. 'String Bean Jean': way overrated. I have panned that song so many times, jeez. It's totally slack.

4. 'Castlehill / Knife and a bike chain' etc etc - I like this too, I think - but why? (It wouldn't work without 'Castlehill', would it?)

5. 'Modern Rock Song' is a load of old rubbish.

he has... a solo album out soon

yep.

It's fantastic!

But... not really a solo album.

I always liked "i want a dance, i want a drink of whisky, so i forget the major and go up the town".

Excited about a solo album.

What are the odds that the girl he'd find after such a long search would also be pretty?

I haven't really listened to B+S since he started letting other people write songs.

given that video and all the people involved, it would appear that this is an elaborate scheme to replace sarah with 3 foxy brunettes.

And Neil Hannon.

the song on the website is nice. this seems like something i will probably love.

xpost - not every singer is susan boyle. pretty girls can sing too. and make graves. and possibly have other uses, i'm not sure.

I am a huge B&S fan (though I miss their days of deeply affected media shyness), but this thing seems like a bummer to me after watching that video. I can't put my finger on it, but he comes off as kind of creepy.

I also cringed at the "Celion Dion fans save your breath" (sic) in the newspaper ad they show, for some reason (and not ONLY because I recently read the Carl Wilson book).

he comes off less creepy in the video than i'd expect from his lyrics, tbh. (less scrawny, too.) and i think the celine dion line was just to ward off idol-type oversingers. what he should have said was, "influences include belle & sebastian."

well, the "Phone Neil on (B&S's phone number)" was probably a bit of a giveaway...

he writes the songs and belle and sebastian play them, how is it not a belle and sebastian album then? the songs on the video sound pretty belle and sebastian-y.

because it's some kind of concept album or something. a girl-group opera.

to anyone who thinks it is good, why is it good?

and how come some people have heard it?

Stuart Murdoch working with Neil Hannon. Jarvis Cocker is tapped to work on Wes Anderson's new movie. Is there a social networking site for fey, hyper-bookish people that they're all on?

Hannon and Cocker suck

Anderson's best seems behind him

Murdoch has been one of the greats

I don't know what I am trying to say, just, I suppose, that I don't want to put them all in the same dressing-up box

Are Cocker's fans really fey and hyper-bookish anyway? I really don't think so; he had amass audience in UK post-1995, and if it's now down to a rump then that would be older 1990s nostalgists maybe

> and how come some people have heard it?

journalists get sent preview copies so they can write about it in their magazines before the official release. they have been doing this for hundreds of years, it shouldn't be a surprise.

You'll be telling me they get paid to do this, next!

they do! some of them even get flights to america to talk to people in bands. 8)

bastards!

and here's me paying to go there! And buying CDs on occasion.

Any vacancies?

The songs seem a lot stronger than recent B&S: less like pastiches of 70s pop or whatever as on the recent records. And there's a return of the kind of fictional richness - the characters and ambience - that distinguished the first two albums.

Maybe it's writing for different voices, but there's a Zombies-ish almost jazziness to some of the chord changes. And the singers are really great - especially Catherine Ireton. I think one of the girls from Smoosh is on there too.

And Hannon sings on the much fabled "Perfection As A Hipster"!

As befits a 40 year old songwriter of his skill and predilections, he's entered his Goat 'n' Gal phase. Like Gainesbourg, Cohen and Hazelewood before him. It's odd that Nick Cave didn't stay settle into that, other than the duets with Kylie and PJ. Perhaps it's cause they were slightly older than half-his-age-plus-seven at the time.

it has leaked, it's terrific. lovely baroque pop. the jazz bits only put me off slightly.

it sounds a bit like a ladybug transistor record.

Oh pinefox why are you so mean about Neil Hannon whose hits:misses ratio feels if anything stronger than Mr Murdoch's to me?

Let me rethink that tho, on suddenly remembering that Murdoch's ratio /= B&S's ratio.

God Help the Girl

Also I can live with his rampant Wee Free Kirk shite within the context of B&S but this album sounds like a morning in with the Jehovah's Witnesses.