Stuart Murdoch is busy. It's no problem – the Belle & Sebastian frontman has always had an air of elusiveness.
It’s Chris Geddes, the band’s long-term keyboardist and founding member, who hops on to chat. It is, without meaning to be, a very Belle & Sebastian thing to happen.
The band is celebrating 30 years of If You’re Feeling Sinister. If you’re a ’96 baby like me, its longevity speaks for itself. The record has made its mark on my life, first sitting on my iPod Classic, and now in regular rotation on TIDAL. If you’re a true OG, you’ll have it on CD, too.
They’re midway through a run of shows performing it front to back, and it seems like the right time to ask what it feels like when something you made in just five days outlives the moment it came from by decades.
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Geddes speaks to the album reaching new and younger audiences: “I certainly never imagined when we first got together and made those two albums that we’d still be going as a band 30 years later, and be playing to audiences where some of the crowd are in their teens or twenties. But maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. When the group got together, a lot of the music we bonded over was also from about 30 years earlier (Love, The Left Banke, Nancy and Lee, Carole King), and while I wouldn’t put us up there with those, I did believe in what we were doing, and Stuart’s songs in particular had a certain magic.”
What Geddes says rings true. Music, like all art, circles back around. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat. And with a perfect 10 from Pitchfork just this year, there’s plenty to reflect on.
“When I listen to Sinister now, I can definitely hear faults – songs speed up, and a lot of my own playing I don’t think is that great.”
It’s a tricky balance: reviews, the feeling of making the work, and hindsight. When I ask how much weight he puts on criticism, Geddes speaks to the band’s earlier days. “Personally, I feel that bad or mediocre reviews stick with you more than good ones, and we definitely had our share of panning over the years. Some people just reacted against the overall aesthetic of the group, which I suppose you should just be able to shrug off, but it’s not always easy.”
Both Tigermilk, their debut record, and If You’re Feeling Sinister came out in 1996 – a short time between drinks – and even though they’re both quintessentially Belle & Sebastian, there’s a bit of a sonic leap between them.
“It’s kind of interesting, because if you look back at our discography, it’s almost like Tigermilk was the template we followed more in subsequent records, because it’s quite varied in terms of the sounds and energy from song to song. Sinister was more of a cohesive thing. All the records we’ve done since have had a bit of that all-over-the-place thing, which I think is sometimes both a strength and a weakness.”
Photo credit: Gaëlle Beri
The songs on Sinister grew out of a difficult time in Stuart Murdoch’s life. Living with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, he spent long periods in isolation – something that lingers in the album’s interiority.
We all live in our inner worlds, and when an artist shares their work, they’re offering a piece of their interior life. In turn, it becomes part of ours. When I ask Geddes about the songs coming from a time of isolation and reaching so many people worldwide, Geddes treads lightly, so as not to speak for Stuart.
“He wrote the songs coming out of a pretty dark time in his life,” Geddes says, “and I know it means a lot when people share stories of how our music has helped them with their own struggles. The audience singing along with ‘Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying’, or getting up to dance to ‘The Boy With the Arab Strap’ – it always feels really special.”
It’s worth remembering how fast this classic album, a Pitchfork perfect 10, was made, and how contingent that speed was on the circumstances. The band rehearsed in the church hall where Stuart worked as a caretaker; both early records were tracked almost entirely live, overdubs added quickly afterwards. Engineer Tony Doogan, who went on to work with the band across several subsequent records, deserves credit that rarely makes it into the retrospectives. “We couldn’t have got them recorded as quickly as we did if he hadn’t been such a good engineer, and amenable to what we were trying to do.”
Things look a little different now. The band have kept making music, most recently 2023’s Late Developers, and the process has evolved with time. “We take a lot longer in the studio now. Depending on how we’re working, we might start recording a song almost while it’s still being written, rather than the writing, rehearsing and recording being separate stages, as they were in the early days.”
If You’re Feeling Sinister is very much an album in the truest sense. It’s a cohesive and immersive world you step into rather than a collection of tracks. In an age where singles edge out albums and shorter tracks win the dreaded algorithm, it’s a special thing for a record to keep living as a whole – especially live. I ask Geddes whether there’s a flow state that comes with performing it front to back.
“A hundred percent. We usually change the set quite a lot from night to night on tour, and speaking personally, to play a set where you know without thinking what the opening ten-song sequence will be has been brilliant. It does make it a lot easier to be in the moment when playing. I wouldn’t really say it’s a nostalgic feeling, though – for me, I just feel like I’m in the song at that moment we’re playing it.”
You’ll be lucky to catch the band in that flow state yourself – they’re currently legging it across the world on the anniversary tour, and hit Australia’s shores in September.
Photo credit: Gaëlle Beri
Of course, I have to ask a little something for myself. ‘I’m a Cuckoo’ isn’t from either of the albums being toured, but it’s an all-time favourite of mine – and if you’re familiar with Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’, you’ll clock the similarity immediately. The riff was, Geddes confirms, very much deliberate. “The guitar riff was definitely an intentional tip of the hat. Stuart and Bob are both big Thin Lizzy fans – me too, to an extent, although the drum break on Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed is my own favourite moment in their catalogue.”
I ask Geddes what music is exciting him now.
“We’ve had some really cool artists open for us at some of the recent shows. Liana Flores in Manchester and Selma French were both brilliant, and I’ve been listening to them a lot. I’m going to the Barcelona Psych Fest with friends this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to seeing Michael Rother, Altin Gün, and Derya Yıldırım there, as well as others I’m not so familiar with yet.”
I like hearing what Geddes is listening to, and that he’s looking forward to seeing music he’s not yet familiar with. There’s always more to come.
It’s easy with an anniversary tour to lean too hard on nostalgia – but truly great music shouldn’t sit in the past. If You’re Feeling Sinister has done thirty laps around the sun, and is a prime example of great music living in the past, present and future, within us.
Somewhere right now, a teenager is listening to If You’re Feeling Sinister for the first time, and maybe in another thirty years, it’ll be part of the fabric of their story. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Belle & Sebastian tour dates:
12 September: Palais Theatre, Melbourne
13 September: Enmore Theatre, Sydney
15 September: Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane
17 September: Astor Theatre, Perth (playing Tigermilk in full plus fan favourites)
18 September: Astor Theatre, Perth
Tickets via destroyalllines.com
