Belle and Sebastian - Tigermilk (1996)

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Belle and Sebastian arrived onto the UK indie scene in 1996 a fully formed band and released this rather excellent debut album. While a lot of Belle and Sebastian fans prefer their other 1996 album If You’re Feeling Sinister and even point out that it’s their best album, I still think that Tigermilk is more enjoyable and more uplifting. Something about the album feels warmer and more cinematic, the songs are more memorable and overall the album feels a little bit more consistent. For a debut album the band sound very confident and Stuart Murdoch proved from the very start that he is an incredibly gifted songwriter and lyricist. His songs can very sweet, uplifting and witty, such as the unforgettable ‘She’s Losing It’ and ‘You’re Just a Baby’. Both these songs have an innocent charm that’s impossible not to love and the sheer effortless pop simplicity that they show is something to be admired. You are immediately reminded of certain 80’s bands such as The Smiths and Felt that effortlessly integrated pop melodies into their jangly and highly literate sound. The New Order-inspired ‘Electronic Renaissance’ also showed that the band were willing to experiment a bit and were never afraid to try out new ideas.

This album marked the very beginning of their magical career and is perhaps the best place to start with them. While the band would take an even more pop-infused direction on 2003’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress it doesn’t quite match the innocence and simple pop charm that this album has in bucketloads.

Recommended Songs: ‘The State I Am In’, ‘She’s Losing It’, ‘You’re Just a Baby’


Bethany Curve - You Brought Us Here (2001)




While the original shoegazing movement faded away from the media spotlight in the mid 90’s it had already inspired a new breed of musicians to create their own brand of sonic bliss. Bethany Curve formed in 1994 and released two solid albums before releasing this magnificent third album in 2001. This is a very dense, heavily textured and darkly atmospheric offering sounding like Slowdive on downers. The band almost sound like they are playing in slow-motion and this makes the album sound very psychedelic and spaced-out. The layers of guitars sometimes remind you of classical string sections such is the sweeping majesty that they conjure. A great example of this is the opening track ‘Long Beach’ where the layers of droning guitars and overtones almost sound like a huge symphony. The use of droning and very long sweeping melodies combined with a thick prominent bass creates this dark and dense atmosphere that engulfs the listener and draws them in, and doing this brilliantly is the epic ten minute forty-five seconds ‘Ann Illusion’.

The sound doesn’t vary too much throughout the course of the album, apart from the near two minutes of noise on ‘The Guarantee’ and the acoustic guitar-based ‘Summer Left Me’. Even the latter still retains the atmospheric sound that characterises the album through its use of droning repetition and spacey reverb-heavy vocals. But the purpose and vision of this album as a whole is to draw you in and keep you in a trance until the very end, and it does a very good job of doing so.

Recommended Songs: ‘Long Beach’, ‘Ann Illusion’, ‘The Lodge’