Taking Sides: The Smiths vs Belle & Sebastian

Um, both?

somehow managed never to hear a full belle and sebastian song. So an uneducated vote for the Smiths.

Smiths are not bad, a bit overrated IMO. B&S are despicably awful.

somehow managed never to hear a full belle and sebastian song.

a younger me would have jumped in and said DON'T.

but no, they are not as good as the smiths by a "long chalk."

I much prefer B&S' tunes, instrumentation, aesthetic. So them.

belle & sebastian are fine, really good even. the smiths were a singularity. no contest and all and I doubt there's a single member of belle & sebastian who wouldn't vote "the smiths" in a second.

goddamn when is the smiths penny gonna drop for me

about the same time as your BALLS

oh!

:D

I much prefer B&S' tunes, instrumentation, aesthetic. So them.

Is "I want to create music that makes people want to punch me repeatedly in the face" really an aesthetic?

You know, I like the Smiths and all, but I will never understand the fetishisation of them as the somehow be all and end all of British musical culture ("best British band since the Smiths!" and all that)

However, voting for B&S would be like accidentally sitting down on a bowl of blancmange on a damp day, so, erm, I'll vote for the Smiths.

Louis, do you play guitar? I have to admit I was a Smiths-hater for a long, long time. Throughout their entire existence. I loved "How Soon Is Now?" as much as anybody with ears should but for the most part I was just "fuck this weak shit." Then I got this idea to play a set of all Smiths covers from the first album, so I started learning the songs. It's not just the guitar parts/chord structure that was impressive - what's going on in the play between Mozz's melodies & phrasing & the music is nothing short of "whoa, wow, that's the sound of real musical collaboration, of people who were kind of made to make music with each other" - hence why Mozz hasn't really ever equaled his work with the Smiths nor Marr his. The stuff they came up with together (to say nothing of how they put it together in the studio, which is a whole 'nother awesome deal of its own) -- it's tremendous, and there's not really anything like it.

B&S excel at a certain type of song. But the Smiths, not to exaggerate too much so grain of salt on the word "invent" here, kind of invented their own kind of song. You don't run across a band like that very often. That's why you, Louis, in your own poll, need to vote for the Smiths.

(I'd say that first Electronic album ranks up there with all of The Smiths albums, actually.)

Well, there's sometimes something ethereal and sublime about B&S' music. Not always, and I wouldn't class them as a favourite band at all, but occasionally there's something with genuine beauty at play. xp

I think the reason I'm voting B&S is that I just don't get The Smiths, and have been more exposed to the former. It'll happen eventually.

whoa ok

Hahaha, yeah "How Soon Is Now" is the one Smiths song I currently love! I only play bass atm, but if you recommend listening carefully to the melodic interplay, that's what I'll do. Like I say, I DO want to like them. I'm still trumpeting The The's Dusk as Marr's finest hour, but this is of course subject to further revelations.

I sort of decided the Smiths were OK, on listening to a documentary on Vox guitars, on Radio 1.

They found a "Sitar guitar", and Johnny Marr (who was there) asked to try it. And played the riff from "This Charming Man" (their single at the time), purely to see what it sounded like.

Totally unselfconsciously.

Decided they were alright after that.

Never been a 'moz lover' as such, but then again didn't go laddishly "Johnny is the one" either. (although, he was..)

Guess I just liked the records.

Another one of those bands I used to like a lot but don't play anymore.

That's good, j0hn, I'm not even sure I've appreciated them that way, as collaborators. Louis is a poet rather than a guitarist, I believe, so I'd also send him to the early stuff for its kitchen-sinkité - first album or Hatful of Hollow, plus 'This Night Has Opened My Eyes', I'd say.

Or just listen to the bass, for goodness' sake.

"This Night Has Opened My Eyes" is one of my favorite songs ever. And yes, the bass is awesome.

weirdly, i'm not really a lyrics man, unless we're talking interplay-of-lyrics-and-music, where the two complement each other...if what J0hn's said is correct, then this shouldn't really be a problem with The Smiths, but I won't love them on lyrics alone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IL0gfbuBRs&feature=related

Dude, just listen to the bass here.

Haha, I've just been coming up with counterexamples to my previous post! I think what I was trying to say is that often I will completely love a lyric, but this love is always either magnified or diminished by the music.

This song is quite elegant. The bass is sultry. It hasn't ingrained itself just yet, but I'll give it every chance.

belle & sebastian are fine, really good even. the smiths were a singularity. no contest and all and I doubt there's a single member of belle & sebastian who wouldn't vote "the smiths" in a second.

I couldn't put it better.

Smiths have a handful of good singalongs, but they're so bloody drab. Monochrome, downtrodden, miserable, navel-gazing, caterwauling, self-deprecating, funkless, self-flagellating drabness. Yeah Johnny Marr blahblah, there'll always be better guitarists. They filled a peculiarly British gap in a market which has always been needed by angsty sixth formers, usually catered to by American bands and continuing in the tradition of goth, emo, grunge, etc, but also Joy Division and the Cure.
I don't want the UK to be remembered for their legacy. All this wry bedroom poesy, Morrisey's seemingly complete lack of exterior awareness, and a licence to moan.

Belle and Sebastian had their faults, but they could write a good tune, a great ear for melody lines, interesting narratives, even a few deviations into funk and r'n'b.

you are insane

Monochrome, downtrodden, miserable, navel-gazing, caterwauling, self-deprecating, funkless, self-flagellating drabness.

You weren't listening to The Smiths. That only works for the first album.

(I'd say that first Electronic album ranks up there with all of The Smiths albums is better than the first two Smiths records, actually.)

I began to marvel at the bass when I heard the Hatful of Hollow and single versions of 'This Charming Man' back-to-back. The former is more than adequate, the latter tweaked just a little until it's transcendent. I love that sense of a band just trying really, really hard.

drab!!??

i have their best ofs and meat is murder... i don't know enough about their discography. i preferred schneider tm's "light 3000" over anything the smiths ever did themselves. don't get me wrong, i do like the smiths, just don't see why they get put up there as the second best british band ever.

then again, the smiths split up pretty much the second i got into music (circa early 1990) so i can't really say i was aware of them at the time.

oh yeah, the b&s guy sings much nicer than morrisey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_at7lEGpjg

you are completely, totally insane

just don't see why they get put up there as the second best british band ever.

it's because no matter how good anyone gets, there'll always only be one half man half biscuit

xposts

drab.

oh come on, even the biggest smiths fan has to admit that they're not exactly a neapolitan explosion of intense technicolour fruitfulness are they?

(not that everyone wants dayglo synth lazer blasts, but hey i'm just makign a point that the drabness is what people like about them)

plus i wasn't talking about "legal man" per se, i was thinking more about "your cover's blown" which is awesome.

http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld/images/blog/05-05/bele_lokai.jpg

this is a closer call for me than i guess for a lot of people, because i really think stuart murdoch is a pretty great songwriter. and these days i'm way more likely to listen to b&s than the smiths. but still. "singularity" is a good way to describe the smiths. the bands are superficially similar in both creating these kind of insular, coherent worlds and filling them with oddball characters and great tunes. but b&s's world, as well constructed as i think it is, is a fairly familiar one: sad schoolboys, sad art girls, rainy day romanticism. where the smiths' world, even though it has its obvious antecedents, is full of surprises and still seems strange 20 years on. maybe even stranger than it did at the time, now that we can see their work as a discrete whole. there are other things like belle & sebastian, and/or other things that belle & sebastian puts me in mind of. there's nothing else like the smiths.

hmm.. i'd have said the opposite personally. B&S evoke some kind of lost, quaint realm of Scotland - tea cosies, walks amongst the thistles, camping out in sleeping bags, a sort of insidious Banksian mundanity, the kind referred to by fellow birth-native David Byrne when he talks about "everything being so normal it's crazy", or words to that effect.

Morrisey's vocals, the torrential guitar textures, the lyrical content of the Smiths make me think of standing in an underpass entrance facing a deserted leisure complex' car park while it just rains and rains and rains. The cold and hollow romance of that kind of image fades away if you've ever visited or been near Stevenage, which I am sad to say I have.

I lived in Stevenage for 18 years and the Smiths are still my favourite group of all time!

I would rather listen to music about being alienated than music about thistles.

How is this even a question?

The Smiths.

(I'm very curious as to how this breaks down along age lines because I am assuming anyone who was around while The Smiths were still together will vote for them.)

28

after the orange marches and all the dog shit in the street, belle and sebastian are the worst thing abt living in glasgow, seriously

lol

I was barely 10 years old when the Smiths broke up, but the very idea that B&S should even be mentioned in the same breath is making my head spin. Even if you don't like the Smiths, it's clear that they were operating on an entirely different level. Most one-sided T/S poll ever.

I was in my late teens when The Smiths were in their prime.

the poll I'd really like to run, as implied upthread, is The The versus The Smiths...not that The The would get much coin

The The would get destroyed, come on now

For all of the ham-fisted fascism flirtations Morrissey made early in his solo career, he never actually wrote a lyric about the n*ggers of the world.

that was very very oh mattjohnsonpaws yeah...but mostly (i.e. not on about half of Mind Bomb) I find his music AND lyrics to be superbly arresting

they would get ruined, tho, which is why i'm not starting that poll

I was around for the Smiths and like a lot of people, I quite like them. Voted B&S.

42 seconds into "Another Saturday" from here and I had to turn it off because of the intense loathing inspired by dude's voice.

masochistic self-absorbed

We shd all agree to disagree and go and listen to Mobb Deep or somethink.

xp iatee - Shakey doesn't need a blog, he just posts to the Wire thread about how he dislikes the Wire

30 seconds into "Sleep the Clock Around" and my whole body went "ffs shut up"

So basically there is something particular about the way they sing combined with the overly precious, mannered music that is emphatically not my thing at all, to the point where I can't even see why anyone else would want to listen to it.

I like the Wire!

jeez

dan will be a guest poster w/ a weekly b&s column

erm how have I behaved like that during this post-thread fallout, sarahel? i was asked an explicit question by klata. self-absorption involves outright rejecting the possibility that an unliked band culd become liked.

Dan, Sleep The Clock Around is on that Myspace and it's excellent. Trust me on this.

oh lol xp

i would subscribe to this blog

goddamn when is the smiths penny gonna drop for me

― kevision questler (country matters), Thursday, September 10, 2009 6:21 AM (3 weeks ago)

Like I say, I DO want to like them. I'm still trumpeting The The's Dusk as Marr's finest hour, but this is of course subject to further revelations.

It hasn't ingrained itself just yet, but I'll give it every chance.

― kevision questler (country matters), Thursday, September 10, 2009 6:53 AM (3 weeks ago)

god, i had one hour's sleep last night

post-POLL RESULTS fallout

i was referring to the posts i c&p-ed from three weeks ago, and also posts on the subject in other threads.

http://blogs.fayobserver.com/faytoz/files/2008/09/no-vacuum_cleaner.JPG

I love both of these bands but I wouldn't have gotten into B&S had I not been an adolescent Smiths fan. I don't think the converse to be true.

xpost you two are so cute--like a B&S song come to life

otm

oh snap

suggest the ban around

The Boy Who Tried to Understand the Smiths vs. The Girl Downstairs with the Vacuum Cleaner For sale

xpost you two are so cute--like a B&S song come to life

― Mr. Que, Thursday, 1 October 2009 20:48 (2 minutes ago)

Ha!

Me and the jagger could become close friends cause we
Get on the same thread and he wants to talk to me
Me and the jagger could become close friends cause we
Get on the same thread and he wants to talk
But there is too much history, too much biography between us

xp - probably more like West Side Story, with Hi Dere singing "A boy like that could keel your brother"

anyway looking at those quotes from 3 weeks back the only worrying trend i appear to be upholding is k3vin keller pun usernames

lolol iatee

no it's more like B&S. I've seen West Side Story, and can't picture either one of you in a knife fight

although if it was a knife fight, it would look an awful lot like the knife fight in West Side Story with all the leaping and prancing

lolllllllllllll

LOL^^^ (I can so see that, somehow)

i don't leap or prance, i go for the jugular

i am wearing a jacobean ruff, so ha

Mr Que can be Officer Krupque

this thread has improved so quickly

I'm going back to the weed thread. This one's getting too hallucinatory.

(xpost) yes, better than the "lame old days", eh.

The most revelatory thing here was Shakey saying he liked the Wire.

Morrisey is a unexpressive, technically poor singer with a loathsome personality and inept sense of humour that his devotees commonly excuse in a risible attempt to combat 25 years of totally justified jibes complaining about what a fucking cunt he obviously is. Marr's a decent guitarist but he's no more unique than dozens of others. Louis, don't waste your time trying to get into them. One listen to the Housemartins is all that's needed. They were everything the Smiths were except they are more fun as a one-time listen and they certainly rocked harder.

I will certainly grant that dude from The Housemartins is a way better singer than Morrissey was, particularly at the beginning of The Smiths' career, but dude got better!

plz rephrase that in terms of west side story

xp

Actually, while listening to Dubstar on my iPod Shuffle the other day the words 'Smiths with tunes and a singer' did creep naughtily into my head. This is probably my last post for 30 days so it's been real guys ^_^

lol but seriously i am actually wearing a full judge's wig and pantaloons therefore cannot hear any of you, en garde miss el

i am actually wearing a full judge's wig and pantaloons

it says a lot that I believe this

at least he isn't dancing with dressforms.

Morrisey The Jets are an unexpressive, technically poor singer gang with loathsome personalities and an inept sense of humour that their devotees commonly excuse in a risible attempt to combat 25 years of totally justified jibes complaining about what fucking cunts they obviously are. Marr's Tony's a decent guy but he's no more unique than dozens of others. Louis Maria, don't waste your time trying to get into them. One listen to the Housemartins Shark's theme song is all that's needed. They were everything the Smiths Jets were except they are more fun and they certainly rocked harder.

iatee, your work on this thread is admirable.

LOL.

we just have a social disease

Why do pantaloons affect Louis' hearing?

he wears them on his head?

Thanks, Pashmina. That certainly seems to make sense. Might explain some of his musical excentricities, too.

Also Jacobean ruff? Does he mean James I's era?

like this?

http://babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/2009/04/raising-arizona-top-11.jpg

there's a certain lol that comes w/ making fun of smiths fans and repping for b&s in the same sentence, I will let you figure that one out on your own

i'll rep for both bands, though i don't listen to either very much (or really at all) anymore. B+S fans, in my experience, seem to have faded away over the last five years, whilst Smiths fans are still sporting Morrissey face tatoos and are damn proud of it.

this really should come down to a survey of Moz face tatoos v Murdoch face tatoos