For a band entering their 20th year, Belle and Sebastian are enjoying rude health, releasing a ninth studio album, and with a written account of their early years just published. Ahead of their headline set at Electric Picnic, Totally Dublin speaks with keyboardist Chris Geddes aka ‘Beans’ about their songs appearing in films, the influence of Peanuts, plus the fact B&S have played the festival either once or twice before, he isn’t sure.
You’re the youngest member of Belle and Sebastian, what was that like?
Isobel Campbell was a few months younger than me, but I’m the youngest person still in the band. I do feel there is a bit of a gap, especially when the band first started, when I was like 20 or 21, and the older folk in the band were 27 or 28. When the band first got together I probably was quite immature, I suppose I caught up to a certain extent. Being in a band, it stops you growing up a bit anyway, so I don’t think the people who are older than me are necessarily any more grown up than when the band first got together.
Stuart David’s book In the All-Night Café about Belle and Sebastian’s early years was released recently. What was the feeling in the band about the book?
I think quite a few of the people in the band have read it but I haven’t. Everybody who has read it has really enjoyed it. Certainly everybody in the band is on good terms with Stuart David, there was no bad blood when he left; it was perfectly amicable. Everyone in the band always wants both members and past members to do well in what they do. I think everybody is really pleased for Stuart to see how well received the book was when it came out. I’m certainly going to get around to reading it at some point.
There’s a great quote in the book attributed to you, from when the band started recording If You’re Feeling Sinister: ‘This has been the best week of my life. But I’m not sure if it’s just because I’ve had a shite life up until now or not.’
I think I did say that. At the end of recording Tigermilk I did cry because it felt like the first important thing I’d ever done. That’s partly why I haven’t read the book, I have a feeling I might find myself an embarrassing character in it. I’m a bit reluctant to read any book where my younger self will appear at some point. But it did feel like that, like ‘Wow, this is something really special. I’ve never been in a situation like this or done anything like this before.’
How do you feel, looking back, about those first two or three records, and how they’re held today as these masterpieces?
In a way the records are far from perfect. I think even at the time of recording If You’re Feeling Sinister we were quite aware of its shortcomings, yet at the same time there was a kind of magic about it. It was a contradictory thing I suppose, because certainly there’s hundreds of records I love, especially stuff from the ’60s and ’70s. I can put our records alongside them, and my own feeling would be that ours don’t come close at all. Yet at the same time when you’re involved in the band getting together and making it, it felt very good, and we really believed in what we were doing. That’s kind of why we kept doing it.
You featured on the cover to Boy with the Arab Strap. What was that like, with everything it basically implied?
I don’t think it’s made me more recognisable, I still feel I can walk around at the band’s gigs and not get recognised. A lot of the cover images over the years Stuart Murdoch has planned quite meticulously. But the one for The Boy with the Arab Strap was done really by accident. We were making a video for Isobel’s song Is It Wicked Not to Care? and she wanted Mick Cooke and me sword-fighting in the video. We were doing sword-fighting with these prop swords and one of them got broken. We were kind of larking around just having the sword stabbed into me when Stuart shot it. It was a complete accident. I never really thought about it too much. I don’t feel like it really means anything.
B&S’s latest album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, has received attention for having a very dance or electronic sound, but there have always been dance-y songs on your records.
I agree with you, it’s been one element of our music that we’ve done all the way through. We’ve always played about with synthesisers and drum machines. I think we maybe took it a little further on this record than we have before. Maybe in the past when we’ve done a dancey song, there’s always been the inclination to take it on a left turn at some point. Stay Loose on Dear Catastrophe Waitress would be an example of that, where it’s got this new-wavey thing, and then goes off on a tangent.
But I think with this record, it was maybe a more straight-forward synthy sound. Again, it’s only one aspect of what’s on the new record. Those are maybe the kind of songs that have got the most attention, the ones that have found their way into the live set. Then songs like Ever Have a Little Faith and Today are much more the traditional band sound, more of a ’60s influence than ’70s or ’80s.
What’s it like to be a member of Belle and Sebastian? Only three members have left in almost 20 years together, most of them amicably – that must be a good sign?
I think the crucial reason that we have stayed together so long is that we do enjoy each other’s company and we are friends. When we’re together we do try and have a laugh as much as possible. The other thing I suppose is that with a lot of bands, if you lost three members over the course of the years, you’d be struggling for numbers. But I guess we’ve always had quite a lot of people in the band as well, and have been able to shed a couple. Four of us have been in the band since the start, plus Sarah Martin who’s been in it since If You’re Feeling Sinister. Creatively, everyone’s got respect for everyone else in the band. On a personal level we all get on, we’ve never really seriously fallen out.
Do you enjoy performing in Ireland?
Well Bobby Kildea the guitarist in the band since 2001, he’s from Northern Ireland, from Bangor. We always enjoy playing in Ireland, whether it’s doing our own headline show in Dublin, or playing a festival like Electric Picnic. I think we’ve done Electric Picnic at least once and maybe twice before. It’s really nice, we’re definitely looking forward to doing it again.
One of my favourite Belle and Sebastian songs is a version of the Peanuts theme, Linus and Lucy by Vince Guaraldi. I think it captures a lot of the basic elements of Belle and Sebastian, like children’s cartoons, this nostalgic ’70s sound, and a kind of wistfulness.
I would agree, I think both musically and in a more general aesthetic way. I was really quite obsessed with Peanuts growing up. I used to watch the TV specials, especially the Christmas ones. You used to get the little cheap paperback version of the books with the cartoons in in charity shops all the time, I used to have loads and loads of them.
The kind of melancholy of it, and Charlie Brown’s travails in life are definitely something that is strongly reflected in the songs, especially the earlier ones. Musically for me it’s a huge thing as well, I love the Linus and Lucy tune that we covered, the Vincent Guaraldi-approach to piano playing. You get on a lot of songs, what I’m trying to do is play slightly jazzy piano in a sort of pop context, so Peanuts is definitely a good reference.
How I first encountered your music was in films like Juno and High Fidelity, but did you also score the Todd Solondz film Storytelling?
We did kind of score the movie but the music ended up being less central to the movie than we originally hoped. I suppose we went away with ideas in our heads that it was going to be like The Graduate or Super Fly, a movie where the music was really integral to the plot of the movie, and drove it along. All Todd was looking for was to use one of our songs over a scene. It was a lack of communication really. Still it was a good experience.
In terms of songs being used in other films or TV things, I think the use of I Don’t Love Anyone on Girls was my favourite one. I’d started watching that, it was a bit of a guilty pleasure, I was just watching it by myself. When our song came on during the end credits, after that really excruciating sex scene, I was like, ‘No way, that’s us! That’s amazing!’ I was really quite pleased. I suppose thinking of Lena Dunham as a younger generation, this really hip New Yorker, the fact that our music seems relevant enough for her to use it in the series is really great.
Belle and Sebastian headline the Heineken Green Energy Stage at Electric Picnic Friday 4th September
Words: Eoin Tierney
