Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant - Belle & Sebastian

‘Fold your hands child…’ is the fourth album from the Scottish collective Belle and Sebastian and the first since the break through success of ‘The Boy with the Arab Strap’, which saw them move away from the cult status awarded by their first two albums and move towards mainstream success. Oh and cause controversy by stealing the Best Newcomer award from under the noses of Steps, shame that. Having thoroughly enjoyed their earlier material I eagerly awaited this album and inevitably bought it on the first day of release. The preceding single ‘Legal Man’ (not featured here) was a slick sounding piece of 60s influenced ...  Read the complete review

but pleasantly pleased with what i purchased. I primarily bought this album after being told by a friend that they were good and after reading revies on this web site that compared the group with Simon and Garfunkel. The standout tracks for me are 'I Fought In A War', 'The Model', 'Don't Leave The Light On Baby' and, above all, 'The Chalet Lines'. What draws the listener to this album is the soft, sensitive tone of the main vocalists and the exceptional lyrics which are seemingly placed over beautiful backdrop music. 'The Chalet Lines' is the perfect example of this. A song about rape, the lyrics, in my opinion, perfectly describe the behaviour of somebody ...  Read the complete review

Going into the world of Belle & Sebastian, i'd only really heard their excellent single 'Legal Man', which doesn't actually appear on this or any of their albums period. So i was buying this album without having heard any of their songs, but from the first strummed notes of the opener, 'I Fought In A War', the album began to pay off. Indeed, the openening track is one of the best ones on the album, combining a gorgeous acoustic guitar riff with a very dark subject matter ("before i would stand with another boy in front of me/ and the corpse that just fell into me with all the bullets flying round") and some great, uplifting ...  Read the complete review

FYHC, YWLAP starts out like most Belle and Sebastian albums with a lone voice waiting for backup, which duly arrives in the form of lush strings and Jim Reeves on guitar. Following this up with 'The Model', a genuine classic even by B & S standards and you realise they've gone and done it again. How long can this band sustain this consistent quality? Maybe it's the fact that they seem to have more members than your average Man United supporters club, but Belle & Sebastian are quite literally able to write memorable ditties at will. 'Waiting for the Moon to Rise' for example has its heart set firmly in the sixties and displays a ...  Read the complete review

Belle and Sebastian are one of those bands which offer an isolationist sentiment and melodic '60's nostalgia', which remains there strong point amongst those who ask - who the hell are Belle and Sebastian? Once discovered though they are hard to shake. Their continued refusal to engage with the media has begun to stir some questions - is their faceless act a result of timidity, or arrogance? Quite simply it is an attempt to not become a commercially successful band, they would rather remain just underneath the water level, doing what they do best - writing great music. Although after the release of their latest single Legal Man (not on FYHCYWLAP) things may ...  Read the complete review