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 ...

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 ...

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 ...