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Belle & Sebastian on 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress'

added 01 October 2003 at 14.57

Softly-spoken indie-pop collective Belle & Sebastian have been serving up lushly arranged dreams of life, love and the tragedies of both for several years now and 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' sees the group's prodigious talents honed still further. By turns mournful, optimistic and wryly humourous, these are songs that'll slip into your heart as subtly and painlessly as a hyperdermic needle, drawing you into their world of lovelorn waitreses and playing field romances as surely as a well-administered shot of laudenam.

Check out 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' on the Xfm Online Listening Post here.

You can read highlights of the track by track guide below. To listen to Sarah and Stuart's explanation in full, just hit the [listen] button.

'Step Into my Office, Baby'
"It's quite a happy experience this song, because it wa s agenuine collaboration. It's really Stevie's [Jackson] song; Stevie's tune, Stevie's notion to have a grungy, John Lee-Hooker intro going into a lush sounding, vaguely Beach Boys chorus. That's what he set out to do." [listen]

'Dear Catastrophe Waitress'
"It's basically a true story - now I'm feeling a bit embarrassed actually. It's pretty much a note that I wrote to a waitress in 1993 in the Grosvener cafe in Glasgow. She'd just started, I'd never noticed her before and it was a busy Saturday, her first day..." [listen]

'If She Wants Me'
"This is another older song and it didn't seem fitting with the group at the time so it just sat on the shelf. It's got quite a lot of room in it, which some of the old songs didn't, and I think this was the time to do it. I'm really happy with the way this came out. I don't think we would of managed that even two years ago." [listen]

'Piazza, New York Catcher'
"Mike Piazza, of the New York Mets, he's my favourite baseball player. I'm old enough that I shouldn't really have things like favourite baseball players, but I'm fond of baseball and for whatever reason my team is the Mets. And the first time K went to see them, as he came out to bat, my friend leaned across and whispered in my ear 'a known heavy metal fan!'" [listen]

'Asleep On A Sunbeam'
"It was one of the earlier ones we got toegther really, last summer. We actually had a go at recording it in November, before we started with Trevor [Horn, producer]." [listen]

'I'm A Cuckoo'
"I sort of wrote it last at night, stayed up late and bought it in red hot in the morning. And we had it together pretty much as you hear it on the record in about half an hour. And it was tremendous, I'd never had an experience of writing and then arranging with the group that matched that." [listen]

'You Don't Send Me'
"Well it's a bit cynical that song. I think it's quite straightfiorward, what it's about. Short of naming names." [listen]

'Wrapped Up In Books'
"There's a film by Jean Luc Goddart and there's a scene in it where the young couple, they're so fed up with each other they can't talk to each other. They're in bed and to talk to each other they get up, go to the library, pick up a book, look in the book for a sentance and show it to the other person. " [listen]

'Lord Anthony'
"Lord Anthony's the kid in school who gets bullied, turns up maybe in your second year at school. You don't know where he's from, he doesn't wear his school uniform, his blazer looks like it was boiught in a second-hand shop. So obviously he stands out like a sore thumb." [listen]

'If You Find Yourself Caught In Love'
"This is very much one song that when the group got at it it really took off big time. I had a mental note, I'd written down 'Cat Stevens or Lovin' Spoonful' <sings> 'If you find yourself caught in love' That kind of feeling." [listen]

'Roy Walker'
"I think Stevie said it was about his friend Roy. And he walks around. I mean, he does walk around a lot." [listen]

'Stay Loose'
"It sort of reminded Mick [Cooke] of 'Ashes To Ashes' and so of course he started to play 'Ashes To Ashes' on the bass. And then somebody else joined in and within ten minutes the group would much rather play 'Ashes To Ashes' than this song which I've just bloody well come up with." [listen]

Check out 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' on the Xfm Online Listening Post here.

www.belleandsebastian.co.uk

Tagged as Belle & Sebastian, archive

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