GRASS OF HOME
Since then, they have released the groovy Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance album, performed their biggest hometown concert at the Hydro (turns out Belle and Sebastian are not an arena band), celebrated the 20th anniversary of their seminal debut Tigermilk, and spent time in the recording studios of their home city, polishing a number of songs to be released on a trio of EPs later this year. A couple of band members now have young families, so the decision to do some home recording was mainly a practical one. Although Geddes, also known for his DJ gigs around town, i nds parallels in his extensive record collection.
‘A lot of the music that I really like, stuff from Memphis or Detroit, was just made by people who went into the studio and worked every day in their hometown,’ he says. ‘It’s what we did in the early days when we were in Cava Studios all the time or recording stuff up at Stuart’s church hall [frontman Stuart Murdoch lived above a church hall when the band were starting out]. It’s nice for us to be back in that way of working.’ Keen Belle and Sebastian watchers will spot the historical link with the three EPs – ‘Dog on Wheels’, ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’, and ‘3 . . 6 . . 9 Seconds of Light’ – which the band released on Jeepster in 1997, containing some of their best-loved songs.
‘I think we all feel that a lot of the best stuff we did was on some of those EPs,’ says Geddes. ‘At the time it seemed the four-track 12-inch was a classic indie format.’ ‘When we i rst put out those EPs, we weren’t really a proper band, so that was an exciting document of a transitional period of people
growing into an entity,’ says Martin. ‘I wonder if this will end up being a document of a transitional period? I suppose you only really know from the other side, don’t you?’ ‘Thinking of it as EPs rather than an album gave it more of an anything-goes idea that things didn’t have to i t so rigidly into an album structure,’ says Geddes.
‘But that’s not quite how it’s worked out,’ adds Martin. ‘It’s gone through a lot of conceptualisation. I think at one point the notion was to deal with major faith systems and have one that would represent a Buddhist thing, one that would represent Islam, and one that would represent Christianity, and then that quite quickly got moved away from.’
While there is still some recording, production and general curatorial work to be done on the three EPs, it seems quite likely that they will feature material written by all six band members, including contributions from Geddes and bassist Bobby Kildea. Martin also coni rms that a title has now been chosen: ‘How to Solve Our Human Problems Pts. 1, 2 & 3’.
‘I suppose most of the songs do concern little problems that people have been preoccupied by,’ says Martin. ‘I don’t know whether we have any clear answers, but I don’t think anybody does really.’ She does, however, have some sage encouragement for local audiences at TRNSMT. ‘If you can walk home from a festival, then you’re laughing . . . ’
Belle and Sebastian play TRNSMT, Glasgow Green, Fri 7 Jul.
1 Jun–31 Aug 2017 THE LIST 31