Bon nuit ma belle (Late Night Tales - Belle & Sebastian)

Member Name: scallmorpheedy

Product:	Late Night Tales - Belle & Sebastian
Date:	08/03/07 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cross genre, unearthed classics

Disadvantages: night time only

Almost fully-enveloped, a last strip-of–sellotape spotting of “Ring of fire” by Johnny Cash, prompts a hasty rethink. Intended as a present for my wife (like I, a belle and sebastian fan,) this fantastic compilation instead spent months unopened in the nether regions of a jam-packed pants-drawer.

Until that is one cold and dark January evening I unearthed it when looking for something else. With nothing but wine and marking to do, I decided to give it a spin. The result was an hour or so of ear-opening delight and eye-popping horror, the former due to the album, the latter due to the plagiarism of my students.

Opening in a smoke-heavy subterranean jazz club, the creak of a door reveals a booming usher leading us into the skunk-tinged cut-and-paste underworld of rehash. Ahead of us a 70odd minute corridor with side rooms and cross paths hiding all manners of delight.

Room one has the beseeching vocals of mama yancey recalling a partially-requited love, her gravelly voice drenched once with woe and next in hope. Beside her, her husband keeps time with a delicately lolloping piano piece that tinkles silently away in the gloom of pained love. Next door, and echoing undoubtedly, a degree of this sentiment, a soothing, yet upbeat procession of inner emotion is provided by the clearly besotted RJD2. The album cover describes this and the next track as Hip-hop, I’m not sure if RJD2 falls into my idea of this, but Loot pack certainly do. I haven’t the earthliest idea what the fellas are on about but the accompanying back track perfectly continues the flow of the album -a consistent beat descending into more abstract sound flows.

Somehow, punctuated only by my baited breath as to how it can be possible, the album’s abstraction dissolves seamlessly into the utterly-broken and despairing vocals of Demis Rousoss before emerging with the urgent insistence of stereoloab’s “French disco.” What an album, from feeling momentarily like a betrayed sheep herder I’m suddenly 21 again flailing to European indie.

By now I’ve put down the pen and take stock. Where can we go next? Backwards, that’s where back to when the word cool was. The peddlers glide in, I drenched in sweat and parisian smokes, they, cut in Italian suits, are the very epitome of cool. They tell us that you can see forever on a clear day. “That’s all very nice,” I reply “but it isn’t clear down here and its certainly not day.” They ignore me and continue dragging the bright blue of above into the world down below.

Drawn by the light I head into a different door as the tempo steps up. Cissy strut by “butch Cassidy sound system,” greets us, hailing us to partake in something called “funky reggae time,” whatever the hell that is. Then, creeping ever near to mad-cap is Johnny Cash with the song that would have raised my wife’s eyebrows. So wrong at other times now it seems so right the clashing mix of ska and country echoing the ebb and flow from one genre to another. I begin to tap my feet just as the Ethiopians shuffle in to keep them dancing.
What follows next, led ably by the soul of Elsie mae, is a segment that can be only be described as a wee bowlie’s wet dream. It’s almost the perfect northern soul night. It is very good indeed.

This melds ultimately into the deranged brilliance of Lost in the paradise, by Gal Costa, a song that would sit very well in a 60’s spy movie or in an early 90’s album by corduroy. Following this Innerzone orchestra and then a song called uhuru develop the nineties theme recreating brilliantly the long forgotten meld of acid jazz and easy listening that made portions of the pre-lad nineties so embarrassingly hip.

Then can you believe it we descend into ambient. Not the bleepy current manifestation but instead the blissed out meanderings of the Steve miller Band, through Donovan and into the Green Grass of Tunnel by mum -a song that has an undefinable visceral quality that moves me almost -but not quite- to tears. Lovely.

Still the mood continues but beginning now to tingle with the sense of it own end. The warm enveloping corridor widens and light chinks in through unnoticed gaps. Day is arriving, the evening has been spent in a reverie and now it has to end, the comedown cooling of the extremities that follows any good trip is upon us and we are ushered out by something by Bach.

What a delicious album, so many genres but essentially the same mood; heartfelt, fuzzy, warming and short. The insert blurb speaks of other albums in the series, each supposedly a montage of the influences on the contributor. This raises a smile, the album lends weight to my suspiscion that the prim tweeness peddled by b+s (and in latter albums verging on cartoon,) is a facade, deep down they have a seedy side that may in fact be a bit naughty and on the evidence of this they probably don't go to bed at nine with horlicks.

Looking further into the series, the name of b+s appears incongruous alongside its dance-biased predecessors -the roll call of which suggests that previous issues have been akin to the back to mine series - however having listened to this it fits neatly into this ethos. I have no problem envisaging this album forming the soundtrack to after-pub activities of various natures. Its just a shame that my current activities have been so dull.

Finally my marking is finished and my wine only partly touched. Beneath me lie twenty or so cut-and-paste monstrosities that barely warrant a look. This generation that I mark have had it easy, no cassette compilation tape for them. Instead, they can cut-and-paste in a matter of clicks -hence their incompetence in the act. They could take a lesson from this album. No rip and slap routine is this –instead a referentially delicate assembly with the finest of ears.

Still I take my students lead and insert a track list below.

"Gratuitous Theft in the Rain" - Rehash
"How Long Blues" - Jimmy and Mama Yancey
"Here's What's Left" - RJD2
"Questions" - Lootpack
"O My Friends You've Been Untrue to Me" - Demis Roussos
"French Disko" - Stereolab
"On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" - The Peddlers
"Cissy Strut" - Butch Cassidy Sound System
"Ring of Fire" - Johnny Cash
"Freeman" - The Ethiopians
"Do You Really Want to Rescue Me" - Elsie Mae
"It's an Uphill Climb to the Bottom" - Walter Jackson
"I'm in Your Hands" - Mary Love
"Coś Specjalnego" - Novi Singers
"Lost in the Paradise" - Gal Costa
"People Make the World Go Round" - Paperclip People
"Uhuru" - Ramsey Lewis
"Fly Like an Eagle" - Steve Miller Band
"Get Thy Bearings" - Donovan
"Green Grass of Tunnel" - Múm
"Casaco Marron" - Belle & Sebastian
"Taireva" - Eric and Mondrek Muchena
"Let Your Conscience Be Your Guidance" - Space Jam
"Watch the Sunrise" - Big Star
"Bedinerie from Bach's Orchestral Suite No.2 in B Minor" - Boston Baroque
"When I Was a Little Girl" - read by David Shrigley

Summary: A genre-crossing mix to accompany night time actvities.