Belle and Sebastian

Latest Articles

Tree by Leaf return, and depart, with Amen & Amen

Postcard from Belfast
Maybe it's fitting, considering the supernatural nature of much of their lyrics, that Tree by Leaf's newest album seems to have dropped from the heavens.
By SAM PFEIFLE | April 06, 2011

How the Decemberists ruined indie rock

Colin Meloy's crew have much to answer for
If you're a regular reader of the Phoenix's music section, you'll have noticed a decided uptick in the space devoted to electronic music here lately: electro, laptop lo-fi, chillwave, superstar DJs, and whatever other bullshit genre we're about to hype next week. There's a reason for that: all the writers here (myself especially) have horrible taste.
By LUKE O'NEIL | January 26, 2011

Stocking stuffers

A grab-bag of local music for every taste
So, this does, indeed, come a week after the whole "gifts" issue, but this is traditionally the week for local music suggestions.
By SAM PFEIFLE | December 16, 2010

Belle and Sebastian | Write About Love

Matador (2010)
As the obviousness of Write About Love 's title implies (it could have been called Play and Sing! ), Belle & Sebastian are looking to get back to basics with their first album since 2005's tremendous The Life Pursuit .
By JONATHAN DONALDSON | October 12, 2010

Beyond the State: What's reopening where

Venue Watch
As we enter Portland's busy season, there are several comings-and-goings (we'll focus on the comings and less on the goings) to keep track of as we plan our summer outings and evenings on the town.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | June 24, 2010

High and low culture from Japan

Art of the Hole Dept.
Attention, admirers of quirky kitsch and over-the-top aesthetics: hit PAUSE on that Belle and Sebastian record for a second.
By LANCE GOULD | June 02, 2010

Must be Marie

Marie Stella's debut EP full of pop and Trust
I’ve always loved Sydney Bourke’s contribution to Satellite Lot’s Second Summer album, and it’s great to see a band built around her excellent lead vocals with the indie-pop Marie Stella.
By SAM PFEIFLE | June 01, 2010

Codeine Velvet Club | Codeine Velvet Club

Dangerbird (2010)
Like a Glaswegian version of Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner’s Last Shadow Puppets , the Codeine Velvet Club project finds Jon Lawler of the Fratellis making retro-’60s supper-club pop with sweeping orchestral arrangements where the fuzzy guitars usually go.
By MIKAEL WOOD | April 14, 2010

Andrew Bird's whistled, wily works

Setting the mood
"Steamy, fecund, decaying, kind of mossy, woodsy . . . cloudlike, thick, saturated."
By MICHAEL ALAN GOLDBERG | January 28, 2009

Review: Mallu Magalhães

Vivo (2009)
Mallu Magalhães is a teenage girl from São Paulo who was raised on a steady diet of old Beatles, Dylan, and Johnny Cash records.
By GUSTAVO TURNER | January 09, 2009

Year in Local Pop: Local motion

Our 2008 playlist
Bands come and go, but songs stick around.
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | December 22, 2008

Belle and Sebastian | The BBC Sessions

Matador (2008)
Call ’em twee or call ’em bookish (after all, they did take their name from a French children’s book), but don’t call Belle & Sebastian anemic.
By ZETH LUNDY | November 18, 2008

Retro, active

The return of Von Doom
It’s hard not to dig Von Doom’s sound for someone like myself, who went a bit apeshit for the lovelorn, melodic, and melancholy noise of early ’90s indie rock, from stalwarts Buffalo Tom and Dinosaur Jr. to obscure stuff like St. Johnny and Seaweed.
By CHRIS CONTI | October 29, 2008

A chilling spray

Sailing the brooding waters of the Baltic Sea
Those of us desperate to escape the singles-saturation our MP3 existence has thrust upon the modern musical landscape and return to album rock now have a band we can get behind — the Baltic Sea.
By SAM PFEIFLE | July 30, 2008

Boston boy

Brian Sullivan is Dylan in the Movies
For a brief moment recently, Brian Sullivan’s musical career came full circle.
By GEORGIANA COHEN | March 24, 2008

Vowel free

Rcrd Lbl's free and legal downloads
Rcrd Lbl pays both artists and labels like Warp and Modular in exchange for permission to post songs.
By CAITLIN E. CURRAN | December 17, 2007

Nice guys

New cuts from John Vanderslice, Bishop Allen, the Cave Singers, and the Tenderhooks
John Vanderslice — indie-rock artist, producer, and all-around nice guy — has had a tough year.
By BRUCE COHEN | July 09, 2007

Devilish details

The Sterns polish their rhymes
From the Kinks’ “Lola” to Henry Gross’s “Shannon” (about a dog, remember?), pop music has a noble tradition of songs with secret meanings. The Sterns, "Supreme Girl" (mp3)
By BRETT MILANO | April 23, 2007

Stars of Track and Field

Centuries Before Love and War | Wind-Up
Stars of Track and Field make a sound much bigger than Belle and Sebastian's tidy twee-pop shuffle.
By MIKAEL WOOD | March 27, 2007

Size matters

The Shins tend to a growing fan base
The Shins’ third album, Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop), is as good as any rational mortal should expect an indie-pop album to be in the winter of 2007. The Shins, "Phantom Limb" (mp3)
By FRANKLIN SOULTS | February 06, 2007

Guest lists

What 30 of the Phoenix 's music critics liked this year
What small, private lists like this remind us is that big, honking institutional lists are largely fictions, mirages of a consensus that no longer exists, if it ever really did in the first place.
By PHOENIX MUSIC STAFF | January 02, 2007

Brazil nuts

The return of Os Mutantes
Last winter, word got out that the original members of the notorious and influential Brazilian psych-pop group Os Mutantes were preparing to perform together for the first time in more than 30 years.
By SIMON W. VOZICK-LEVINSON | November 20, 2006

Digital creatures

Some hairy tracks
You gotta be careful out there, downloaders.
By CHRIS NELSON | September 05, 2006

King of Kingpins

The Wrecking Crew’s Abolition Strategy sounds like a winner
Kingpin Wrecking Crew are set to release their sophomore album and label debut, Abolition Strategy , so it’s worth writing about how they are and are not just like all the other bands in town.
By SAM PFEIFLE | June 28, 2006

Get it while you can

Will sites like YouTube and The Hype Machine go the route of Napster?
A couple of months ago, a man with the screen name x-amount logged on to Recidivism.org , the blog he maintains with a few of his friends, and made a pronouncement.
By MIKE MILIARD | June 12, 2006

Waiting for the Sun

Guster can’t quite keep it together
Ganging up on the Sun gets caught between adventurous and jones-fulfilling and feels like an album in search of an identity.
By SAM PFEIFLE | June 07, 2006

On the Racks: June 6

From Strummin' with the Devil to a revived Live
David Lee Roth, AFI, Cheap Trick, Camera Obscura, Elvis Costello, and Live
By MATT ASHARE | June 06, 2006

Gorillaz in the midst

Damon Albarn joins Beck in the pan-cultural playground
Remember the great electronica gold rush of ’97, the year Madonna’s Maverick label won a massive bidding war over long-ignored rave mystic Liam Howlett, a/k/a Prodigy, and we all grooved to the electropunk clash of “Smack My Bitch Up”?
By MATT ASHARE | May 17, 2006

Ballot crunching

Don’t be an uneducated BMP voter
For the sake of whetting your whistles, here is a brief primer to the Portland Best Music Poll ballot’s major categories.
By SAM PFEIFLE | April 05, 2006