Stuart Murdoch micro-scooters into view, a vision in green parka, chunky-knit emerald cords, off-to-work rucksack and Peaky Blinders-adjacent grey flat cap. The niceman cometh, indie edition.
The musician waves cheerily through the restaurant window and casually props his pavement-pounder, unlocked, against the railings. No fears of theft round these parts, seemingly. Because his band Belle and Sebastian have been part of the Glasgow furniture for 25 years and are bona fide local heroes whom no one would dare rob? Because he’s in a hurry, a lunchtime interview to fit in amid pre-tour rehearsals and the appearance of a new album, due in the shops any day now? Because, ach well, he’s that kind of guy?
The singer and songwriter, 53, plops himself down with boyish enthusiasm and eagerness to talk, and not necessarily because we have a bit of previous: I’ve been interviewing Murdoch, on and off, most of those 25 years. He’s clearly thrilled with A Bit of Previous, the band’s 11th studio album, not least because it’s already speaking to a new generation of fans, the children of OG followers.
“Right at this second, we have two 15-year-old sisters in southeast London making a video for us,” he says proudly of the clip for the band’s next single, the synth-propelled “Talk to Me Talk to Me”. “You know, this is modern music – we ran out of time and money to make any more videos. So I put a call out on Facebook: ‘Right, who wants to do the next video?’”
His request for an image and a 100-word pitch solicited “about 100 treatments, and all these guys my age replied, going: ‘I’m in a woods. I’m looking at myself in a mirror. There’s trees and it’s dark…’ I’m like, for f***’s sake!” he says, exasperated at the clichés from his gender and generation. “And then this mum said: ‘My daughters are huge fans…’”
The sisters sent a mood board, “a collage of loads of pictures. And you could tell instantly what the vibe of video is going to be. So they’re doing it right now. They’ve involved their whole school, and we’re gonna get them all along to the show in London [later this year]. I feel relieved, but I also feel very positive about it. It’s good to let the youth have a go… to see that second generation that are interested in [us]. And the thing is, they’ll come up with something that we could never have come up with, which’ll probably spark off with younger folk, too.”
Even better, their treatment doesn’t involve filming the band.
“But of course, I did have someone from the union, Bectu, getting in touch, saying [stern voice]: ‘Stuart, what is the budget for this? Are you exploiting your fans just to get a cheap video?’ And I was like: ‘The budget was the budget I was gonna make it for, about £2,000!’ So I had a good out there,” he adds with a relieved smile.
This homespun, let’s-do-the-show-right-here (with-some-kids) ethos is of a piece with previous Belle and Sebastian (ad)ventures. In 1999 they instituted their own curated festival, Bowlie Weekender, at Pontin’s holiday camp in Camber Sands, East Sussex. In 2019 they finally launched a follow-up, Boaty Weekender, a cruise around the Med with pals like Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub and Nilüfer Yanya all performing. I was aboard for both, and both were among of the best musical (and party) experiences of my life.
And it’s of a piece with the making of A Bit of Previous. The pandemic scuppered Belle and Sebastian’s initial plans to record in Los Angeles in spring 2020 with Canadian producer Shawn Everett (War on Drugs, The Killers). “He’s a big cheese! He’s got Grammys coming out the yin-yang!” Murdoch says, which is Glaswegian for “he’s got six”.
So, after six months in which they “shut everything down” and each went off and did their own thing (Murdoch wrote two-thirds of an autobiographical novel about his pre-B&S days), the band reconvened in December 2020. They converted their longstanding rehearsal space, round the corner from this restaurant, into a Covid-safe, socially distanced recording studio, with jerry-rigged booths for everyone.
“It’s like a doll’s house!” he beams, pleased with the pokiness. “We were dotted around the two-storey building like Barbie dolls in a Barbie world,” Murdoch writes in the album’s sleevenotes.
From such cramped and cluttered environs has come a self-produced set of songs that were sometimes written and recorded on the same day. It’s Belle and Sebastian’s most energetic, vivacious and colourful album in a long time.
“Well, you couldnae get less energetic!” he laughs, his west coast Scottish accent and patter sounding melodic and expressive. “You met me back in the day, and you know how ill I was. I wasnae well! That was the seeds of the group,” he acknowledges of how his health shaped the band’s early sound and profile. Murdoch has myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome, which he addressed in the defiantly glorious 2015 song “Nobody’s Empire”. “But definitely, as we’ve gone on, we’ve got more robust.”
A quarter of a century ago, around the time of 1996’s still-staggering double-whammy opening gambit of Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, the Scotsman was a reluctant interviewee. A faltering conversationalist, at best, when he could be roused, who saved his poeticism and engagement for his songs.
I’m always interested in the new songs, the ones that come off the grid
But what songs. Those first two cornerstone albums were followed by The Boy with the Arab Strap (1998), with its canonical title track and accompanying crowd-sourced fan campaign which saw the many-headed Glaswegian indie troupe scoop the 1999 Brit Award for Best Newcomer from under the noses of Steps, much to Pete Waterman’s chagrin. Then came 2000’s Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, which landed them in the Top 10 for the first time and, via pop-Mod belter “Legal Man”, on Top of the Pops. Belle and Sebastian were cardigan-wearing disruptors, a beloved but contrary cult storming the Smash Hits Bastille.
“Ironically, even though that’s the first five years of the band, it’s probably the period we’ll always be known for,” Murdoch acknowledges. That early acclaim helped build a widespread footprint for a time-served British band with that rare thing: a devoted fanbase in multiple, planetarily divergent territories around the world, notably America, that’s going strong well into their third decade. “And it’s so difficult to shake people’s idea about that. But we’ve been doing it for 20 years since.”
How does he feel about the band – which currently comprises Murdoch, Sarah Martin (violin, flute, vocals), Stevie Jackson (guitar, vocals), Chris Geddes (keyboards), Bobby Kildea (guitar), Richard Colburn (drums) and Dave McGowan (bass) – being characterised, or even pinned like butterflies, by records they made over two decades ago?
“I think it’s OK. Usually you’ve just got your head down, getting on with it,” he answers with the equanimity of a prolific writer and an at-peace, middle-aged man who practises Buddhist meditation and who led fans and fellow travellers in regular Facebook sessions throughout the pandemic. “But a few days ago, I was on a podcast, and this American journalist was quite definite about it. He said: ‘What can you expect when you created Belle and Sebastian Land! In America, nobody knew what you looked like, and all these records would come tumbling out, you were creating this thing.’
Belle and Sebastian performing in 2017
The band are set to tour North America after the release of their 11th studio album, ‘A Bit of Previous’
