Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - God Help The Girl

Stuart Murdoch on the joys of making a concept album:

It's funny to me that however nice your record label is, however well you get on with them, you are still usually engaged in two different campaigns. I guess each side tells themselves that they are getting what they want, while pushing in entirely different directions.

B&S prepare new LP; Gordon Smart expecting first listen

According to Stuart Murdoch's diary, the new [not-quite a] Belle & Sebastian album is about to go for mastering:

I’m aiming to master all the “God Help The Girl” songs by the end of November. I think there are 18 of them. It’s a good feeling to think about making records. Sleeves and schedules, running orders and what not. It’s been so long since I did it that, I suspect the landscape has changed.

Do you get the same thrill when you look forward to a record coming out? I suppose I must ask the youngsters among you, because age dulls most thrills. But youngsters, where are your thrills coming from? Do you desire the sensation that is the Long Playing Record. Does pop music teach you and hold you and thrill you the way it used to? The way it did to us?

Careful, Stuart - going online and asking young people what thrills them is a little frowned on these days, you know.

[via Muzzle Of Bees]
[UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who pointed out that this isn't quite a Belle And Sebastian release]

Stuart Murdoch wants you

Belle and Sebastain are getting into musical theatre. Or, rather, they're making a film musical.

The plan is to write a few new songs, but the storyline will be punctuated by Belle & Sebby's back catalogue. You know, like Queen's We Will Rock You.

Only without Ben Elton's involvement, as far as we can tell.

Stuart Murdoch fills in some of the storyline:

Stuart said: "It happened to a boy and a girl and a girl, in a city roughly the same size and population of Glasgow. Perhaps the canals were a bit grimier, the high-rise buildings taller.

The streets emptier when you needed them to be, and the beat clubs busier than the ones around here. But on the whole the city was this one."

The romantic protagonists live next door to each other in - inevitably - neighbouring bedsits:

"The boy was kind of flexible as nobody had shown much interest in him for awhile. So he went along, prepared to teach girl two all he knew about the steel-strung acoustic guitar that he cradled.

"Girl two wanted to learn, but more than that she wanted to sing to somebody, and tell somebody about what was happening. So she attached herself to girl one and the boy."

Murdoch is hoping to find someone to play one of the girls; everything else has been cast.