In the All-Night Café
Stuart David
Little and Brown
The weight of nostalgia must be tough for a band, and none more so than Belle and Sebastian. Their first three albums are spoken of in sainted tones – any new release must seem pointless. They have only themselves to blame; their music crystallising in their listeners minds what the late ’90s sounded like. It’s a period that frontman Stuart Murdoch appeared to resist in his own memoir The Celestial Café (note the café theme), set around the release of 2003’s decent album Dear Catastrophe Waitress. But it’s a trick the band’s other Stuart – ex-bassist Stuart David – doesn’t miss. Here, David pens his recollections of a time for the band that fans most care about.
David recounts his time spent at the music production course Beatbox in Glasgow, specifically set up for musicians on welfare. People piled in together, and given no direction, studio time or instruments, David formed a number of bands with his fellow ‘inmate’ Murdoch. David writes particularly well on how the band achieved their endearingly shoddy sound. The book gives a sense that B&S was all Murdoch’s doing, with David unable to crack quite where he got all his good ideas. Still, fans will be glad that David was the one who put pen to paper, in a memoir as witty and unassuming as the best of Belle and Sebastian’s music.
Words: Eoin Tierney
