Editor’s Note: This is the fourth installment of Mood Music — a feature in which I will deconstruct an album each month, analyzing it as it relates to the bipolar experience.
Soft and sensational, Belle & Sebastian’s The Boy With the Arab Strap tranquilizes the listener with its amalgam of subtle instrumentation. The album features the standard guitar, bass and drums, plus… strings, synthesizers, xylophones, trumpets, flutes, pianos, bagpipes, and organs. You wouldn’t think an album with this many instruments would inspire such tranquility, but it does.
Belle & Sebastian are a Scottish twee-pop band with nine albums under their belt. Twee pop is sensitive and romantic. With its jingle-jangle guitars, it has the feel and idealism of ‘60s pop.
On most songs, frontman Stuart Murdoch’s smooth voice — complete with Scottish brogue — is like a dream.
The Boy With the Arab Strap is an album for when you are in a pensive mood.
I like to listen to Belle & Sebastian when I want to mellow out. Maybe on the subway ride home after seeing a loud rock show. It’s quieting.
Track two, “Sleep the Clock Around,” is the album’s best by far, an ode to sleeping in:
Take a walk in the park, take a Valium pill
Read the letter you got from the memory girl
But it takes more than this to make sense of the day
And it takes more than milk to get rid of the taste
…
And the puzzle will last till somebody will say
“There’s a lot to be done while your head is still young”
If you put down your pen, leave your worries behind
Then the moment will come, and the memory will shine
And with that line, the song bursts into an angelic hush sound of swirling keyboards. Dreamy and passionate.
…
Then you go to the place where you’ve finally found
You can look at yourself, sleep the clock around
The clap-along title track with its ambling bass line and flutes is a rare upbeat moment on the album, which is mostly made up of crooning indie pop.
“A Summer Wasting” captures the carefree feeling of staying up all night in the summertime.
And “Is it Wicked Not to Care” features Sarah Martin’s amiable vocals. Delicate and tender, her singing voice is as peaceful as an infinity pool, with endlessly overflowing placid water.
A lullaby for the soul, The Boy With the Arab Strap is soothing and sophisticated Sunday-morning music to chill by. And perfect for when you are in an introspective mood.
Watch a live clip of “Sleep the Clock Around” below.
Or if you’re on Spotify, subscribe to this playlist with two handpicked bonus tracks.
