Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister (33 1/3) by Scott Plagenhoef

33⅓ Main Series #50

by Scott Plagenhoef

At the time of its release in 1996, If You're Feeling Sinister was a romantic and defiantly independent artifact - a fully formed, pristine seashell of an album quietly washed ashore, waiting to be discovered by anyone who cared to look. Here, Scott Plagenhoef lovingly investigates the record's creation and influence. He tells the story of the unusual band that created it and conjures up a time, at the dawn of the Internet era, when it was still possible for perfect pop music to retain a veneer of genuine mystery.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Pop Culture, Essays

Paperback

First published September 15, 2007

Reviews

[Jason Coleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

As literally everyone has pointed out, Plagenhoef barely addresses the Sinister album itself, but I don't know that this is a problem. He's trying to nail the peculiar quality of Belle & Sebastian's art in general. And the mystique: Plagenhoef sees B&S as the last band to benefit from the pre-Internet distance artists could have from their public, and he uses this as a springboard into a pretty compelling—if a bit deadline-raggedy—discussion of fans' end-of-the-century relationships to their music (the book could have been called You Kind of Had to Be There). Anyone can download a copy of Tigermilk, but it was probably more fun to live in a world where the only people who could hear it had either bought it in Glasgow in 1995 or paid $1,000 for their copy. The big treasure hunts are over, folks. These days Swann could just purchase Vinteuil's little sonata on iTunes.

Another loud bonk! I'm writing this next to our big living room window. The cicadas keep flying into it.

[Mattia Ravasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9hmR...

Despite telling you sweet fuck nothing you don't know already about the actual Sinister record, this is a pretty informing and enlightening read on the state of indie music in the 80s and 90s, and on the ways the Internet has changed how we approach music in ways more, well, sinister than we may usually think.

[Tyler McGaughey · Rating 1 out of 5]

So here's what this book actually consists of: some perfunctory background details of the band that could be gleaned more thoroughly from Belle and Sebastian: Just a Modern Rock Story; some perfunctory background details of the British pop scene in the '80s/'90s that aren't quite relevant enough to justify their inclusion; a sort of central thesis about the ability of a band to maintain an air of mystique in the pre-iPod era, and how digital filesharing has changed people's relationship to pop music (which often reads like a second-rate Pitchfork feature); and, finally, the last fifteen pages, in which Plagenhoef seems to remember the actual subject of his book, and allots a pitiful two or three paragraph summary of each song on the album. This book just seems half-assed in nearly every way, and it's also in dire need of some decent copy-editing.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belle and Sebastian are one of my favorite bands, and their story is likely the last one where a band builds a fan base organically instead of through the modern-day hype machine that is public relations and music-press sensationalism. Their records mean a lot to me, and I think the allure of the band lies in their ability to make music that speaks to their fans no matter how far they get from the (by necessity) lo-fi origins of their early days.

Like the best music writing (and like some of the best examples of the 33 1/3 series), "If You're Feeling Sinister" isn't necessarily about the album in question so much as it's a chance to provide an overview and context to B&S's career, especially through the prism of its elusive frontman Stuart Murdoch. Confined to his house by chronic fatigue syndrome, Murdock emerged in the mid-Nineties to record "Tigermilk" (the first B&S album) as part of a university music course, and "If You're Feeling Sinister" followed shortly after. I have the album and, while it's not my favorite B&S album (gun to my head, I have a fondness for "Fold Your Hands" or "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" that trumps "Sinister"), it's easily the best gateway to Belle and Sebastian's music as far as I'm concerned. Music critic Scott Plagenhof captures the mid-Nineties scene that B&S emerged from and shows why the band (and the album) resonate with audiences then and now.

But Plagenhof does pad the narrative with asides to the music scene in England (the "Britpop moment") that take away, at times, from the story of the band itself. I understand the effort to provide context, but I'm not sure all that is necessary, or integrated well into the overall narrative of Murdoch's evolution as a songwriter and band leader.

All that said, this does serve as a good introduction to the band's story for new fans ("Just a Modern Rock Band," the official band biography, is a great follow-up to this volume if you can find it), and it continues in the tradition of 33 1/3 in that it spotlights not just a great album but a great band's evolution into one of the most beloved acts of its time.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've enjoyed most of the books in this series that I've read -- especially the one on Bjork's album "Homogenic", which gave me a new appreciation of both the artist and the album. But this book, supposedly on Belle and Sebastian's album, "If You're Feeling Sinister", veers way off topic too often. I understand that the band wasn't willing to participate in the making of this book, but heck, they managed to write a wonderful book in this series on The Pixies' "Doolittle" without talking to Kim Deal, so I expected more here. Some interesting background on the British music scene, but also a lot of assumed knowledge about the British music scene, so have fun with this book, everyone everywhere else in the world -- get ready to see band names you've never heard before and to be confused about the weird reverence for band's like Dexy's Midnight Runners. (Seriously, what the heck band is "Orange Juice" -- at times, it seems like the book is about THEM.) The most damning thing about this book is the fact that only the last 10-15 pages actually discuss the songs on the album, and the observations are trite and shallow -- in some cases dismissing a song off-hand, like "Mayfly", with a smug-hipster sneer attitude that made me want to punch the book. Worth it only for the genuine observations about the band and its fans, but hardly worth wading through the condescension to get there. Read anything else about the band instead.

One addendum: I will say, however, that the meandering off-topic screed about BritPop actually made the graphic novel series "Phonogram" make SO MUCH more sense. So one bonus star for that, why not.

[Joanne Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't start talking about "If You're Feeling Sinister " until about page 94 (of a 105 page book). Interesting but not really what I wanted. ..

[Ilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less a biography of an album than a panoramic survey of the context into which the band emerged in the second half of the 90s. Plagenhoef is particularly interested in how the music press was changing just as it was coming into contact with the early days of the internet, and the new connections and conversations between fans that were made possible by it. The thesis of the book is that Belle & Sebastian were possibly the last band that could build up a cult following slowly over time, gradually revealing themselves over a number of years rather than being caught up in the cycle of hype that comprises so much of contemporary online music fandom.

For all the investigation into the joys of the early days of music message boards, the various ways the band were covered by contemporary music journalists, and the rise and fall in popularity of different genres, I did wish for a bit more close listening of the actual music B&S made. Plagenhoef is actually quite good at highlighting lesser-known parts of the discography that deserve greater attention. This book could have done with being longer, with a bit more of a structure, to give the author the space to deal with the micro of the band and their songs alongside the macro of where they fit in the history of the 90s and pop music as a whole.

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally I don't go in for rock music journalism, since it tends to be an exclusive boys club that aims to make you feel like you're the most un-hip of the un-hip since you don't understand all the cock-slapping double entendres of the latest band full of phenoms... or maybe it seeks to stroke the critic's ego with the number of times they state how they were into metal back when metal was more than metal and the current state of metal just makes their teeth curl with the lack of purity and righteousness...

However, the 33 1/3 series are actually written by intelligent writers who delve into the band and the music, well, intelligently. This one, about Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister record, is more about the totality of one of the more reclusive bands who make sweet music.

Any book that includes the insight that Belle and Sebastian's music was the antithesis to the prevailing trend at the time of "laddism" (remember "The Man Show" and it's ilk?) and that laddism was just "the white heterosexual male's panic at his own cultural redundancy" is okay in my book. No pun intended.

[Michael Roman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting read on the early history of the band, but for a book thats supposed to be about a particular album, it's probably better suited to be called Tigermilk. Not that it affects how enjoyable the read is, but there is definitely more of a focus on Tigermilk than If You're Feeling Sinister (which only really starts to be looked at in the last few pages). Still a good read for any fan of the band.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pompous, scattered, and unfocused -- Scott Plagenhoef never really discusses the album, yet seems to tenuously discuss every '-ism' that has ever surrounded it. There were a few gems of insight, but never developed into anything ground breaking. This "essay" was more of a self-conscious posturing on Plagenhoef's half-cooked theories about the mp3 era, rather than an examination of a brilliant album. But then again, what else should I have expected from a member of Pitchfork?

[Ross Bonaime · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scott Plagenhoef's book on Belle and Sebastian's "If You're Feeling Sinister" is only partially about this indie rock classic. Rather, it's more focused on how the internet has shifted how we absorb music, and how B&S could stay relatively unknown in a world before the internet became the primary way of finding new music.

B&S, at least in their early days, were more interested in their audience finding them, rather than their music finding a larger audience, and Plagenhoef seems to admire this aspect of the band. There's mystery to the early days of B&S, a band who only revealed who they were in message boards and their records were hard to find. This book was originally published in 2007, when indie rock's popularity was becoming gargantuan, and I sort of understand how Plagenhoef would at that time be a bit frustrated with the ease with which indie rock had hit the mainstream. But it's also odd to me that, as the associate editor-in-chief of Pitchfork, he's complaining so much about the state of music journalism and the rise in popularity of indie music, given the success of Pitchfork at the time and their placement in making so many obscure artists household names.

That being said, I appreciate how Plagenhoef looks at "If You're Feeling Sinister" through the lens of indie rock that had to be hunted for. If you found this band, you had to search for them and at that point, your quest for knowledge on them was only just beginning. I think this book works best when it's discussing B&S, their history, and their odd placement within the music industry, and less when it's about the state of the online music and criticism—a take which probably would've felt dated a year after the book's publication.

[Nicole M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another 33 1/3 book, I was less impressed with this one. Although very informative, I felt that it focused very little on the album of the title, not discussing it with any detail until the final pages. The organization felt a bit all-over-the-shop, but it's also very clear that the author is a big fan of the Belles, and that's worth something. All in all, not bad.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not about the album. It's about Belle and Sebastian. A group I adore to no end. The story Plagenhoef writes is involving and moving. It upped my admiration for B&S.

But 33 1/3 is a series about albums. Not careers. As skillful as Plagenhoef is about detailing B&S's career and importance, he doesn't talk about If You're Feeling Sinister much at all.

[Annez · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in depth look at Belle and Sebastian that also becomes, in part, a treatise on ‘90s indie pop. For all that this is an extremely niche topic, there is still room to disagree with the author, particularly regarding his gloomy conclusion, which comes as a shock considering that B&S is mostly a good-news musical story.

[Daniel Watkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a lot of good material in the book. I’m glad I read it. I wish it was edited and organized better. It felt a bit like whole sections got shuffled, or written separately - every other chapter felt like an introduction to the book rather than a continuation of previous themes. Could have been a lot better.

[Rhiannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Everything about this record screams 'Too fucking precious!' Pardon my cynicism, I'd forgotten how to recognize beauty in the increasingly infrequent times I stumble across it." - some guy in Melody Maker

First things first: If You're Feeling Sinister may not be my favorite Belle & Sebastian album, but it was my first! And, in all honesty, I cannot tell you which of B&S's albums is actually my favorite one anyway. But, Sinister is likely the one that got the most airtime with me... I listened to this album for a good two years without buying another B&S record (even though in 2003, the band had five studio albums released), because it was good enough for me to listen to it on repeat and think, "I could just listen to this and nothing else..."

Apparently, Sinister was most people's first Belle & Sebastian album, since their debut Tigermilk was this impossible-to-get mythological limited vinyl-only release. <-- This theme (the mythology and legend of "discovering" an indie-pop band in the pre-iTunes era) runs throughout Scott Plagenhoef's 33 1/3 Series offering.

See, Plagenhoef is an "associate editor-in-chief" at Pitchfork. If you don't know Pitchfork, its the internet-age answer to the dying 90's zine-scene (and if you don't know about that than I am out-of-my-element in being able to draw a comparison because you're probably old); it was the ultimate hipster-music-geek-go-to web venue - to the point where hipster-music-geeks have mostly outgrown it - it became "too mainstream" or something...kind of became a parody of itself due to the style of the reviews and the focus on its own importance in determining indie-rocks hits and misses.

So, as you can expect with Plagenhoef at the helm, this book gets a bit off-topic (topic: Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister) and starts to drag serious ass while Plagenhoef whips out his "Entire History Of Indie Rock" notes that he's been compiling for no reason in the second chapter, "They Don't Make Them Like They Used To." (yes, that's the real chapter title, named after a Belles lyric). Yawns-ville!

(Also, can one of you music nerds tell me what "MOR" bands are? I've worked in retail music for the past nine years and can't figure out this term that Plagenhoef throws around multiple times without defining. Shame on me? Shame on Plagenhoef?).

Plagenhoef mostly waxes about how the internet is kind of good for music - but not really: That the days of authentic "discovery" are gone, and that Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister was probably the last indie-rock album that came along before the internets changed music forever.

People had to wait for this album, and talk about it, they had to reason whether it lived up to the hype or not on their own. And it was the last time a band could "withhold" til the right moment, in terms of press exposure/live shows/recording and releasing. In some ways, he was a good enough writer to (almost) make you wish that the days of "the album" weren't over. In some ways, he was a good enough writer to make you believe Belle & Sebastian are the ultimate purveyors of pop-nostalgia.

I felt like this was mostly an extended magazine article. I did, however, find Plagenhoef's writing style superior to Paul Whitelaw's, who wrote a Belle & Sebastian biography in 2005 that made me uncomfortable in the sense that it read like an extended Tiger Beat obsess-a-thon. I mean, Plagenhoef still maintained a cooler-than-you/hipster indifference one comes to expect from a decent music journalism piece. I got the sense that Whitelaw, in his bio of the band, simply wanted to offer Stuart Murdoch the best blow-job of his life, albiet in written form.

I would've liked to have seen less "check out my knowledge of post-punk/indie pop" discussions from Plagenhoef, and more focus on the record itself. The discussion of the actual songs and lyrics of If You're Feeling Sinister was mostly regulated to a decidedly short third chapter, with a lot of unrelated music-journalism mess in the middle the book.

Anyways, I'm going to go listen to Sinister now (even that borefest, "Fox In The Snow," which Plagenhoef calls "achingly gorgeous"). Because I don't really care where Belle & Sebastian land on the indie-pop timeline, or what their significance is to the development of the internet forum. They are the fucking best band on the planet: a band that writes in character-point-of-views instead of trapping itself in the "I am/I will" first-person; writes songs where suddenly there's a flute you were not expecting to hear; and a band that brings sweet strings and loud trumpets and happy hand-claps into a giant orgasm of over-the-top prettiness while always being tongue-in-cheek enough to pull it off. :-P

[Alex Forster · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a short history of Belle and Sebastian with a tracklist review tacked on the end. Some interesting observations on the 90s indie scene and press but tends to talk more about the albums immediately before and after Sinister. Think 33 1/3 were still figuring out the format at this point.

[steve watson` · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've enjoyed a lot of the 33 1/3 series, particulalry Bowie's 'Low' and The Band's 'Music from the Big Pink' but found this disappointing as it gives limited insight into the band, the albulm and the context of Glasgow in the 90's.

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, if you have nothing to write and a book contract, this pretension and babble is better than nothing. But you’d get more from reading Wikipedia. Read In the All-Night Cafe by Stuart David instead.

[Kenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much more than half of this book is about Belle and Sebastian, less than a fifth of it is about If You’re Feeling Sinister, and all of it is contextualised from an infuriatingly American perspective.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Documenting the princelings of twee, this is a great book about nerd culture and the outsider in rock.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best in this series, with 'ILX' written all over it.

[Topher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird to read a book about music by someone who really seems to hate music.

[Dougal · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the weaker 33 1/3rds I've read IMO. Listen to this album, feel free to skip this book.

[Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curious mix of interesting stories about the band and judgmental, pretentious nonsense. Worth reading but also worth skipping a few pages here and there.

[Harold · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe, just maybe an American can write sensibly about Belle and Sebastian, but not this writer. However, he doesn’t write about the band, let alone the album, at all, so we’ll never know. This was the first book I read in this series, and I’ll stick to other series, like the wonderful ‘Every album, every song’ series.

[John Kilvington · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly interesting in parts but all over the place and not well organized. Some inexcusable typos too.

[Dusty Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot going on in this book, most of which is good. I've never been a particularly huge fan of Belle & Sebastian, and while this book doesn't change my perception completely, it offers a great narrative around why this band is important. I was drawn to this book not just to read something more cotemporary in 33 1/3, but also because of the summary's explanation that the book is mostly a reflection on how music is consumed in the Internet age. Much of the book discusses the culture of the band and how they represent the last era of enigma in indie rock. I found a lot of this fascinating, especially about the by-mail newsletter and planned meet-ups to discuss the music. Very much feels like an inside secret, something the author paints as being lost. But the rest of the book feels a bit disjointed to me. In lieu of chapters, it's split up into three sections that I can't really draw clear themes from. It's a short book, but it makes the pacing feel much more sluggish. Chapters would also have been great to break-up ideas. In the last section, Plagenhoef bounces between the Internet, reviewing the album, and spouting off on the band's influences. Also the repetition was really cumbersome with sections referencing bands like Orange Juice, The Go-Betweens, and The Smiths over and over again. It really belabored some of those least interesting points - great for providing context to B&S the first time they're mentioned, but then a bit pointless after that.

It was also unclear why "If You're Feeling Sinister" was chosen. The record is barely discussed until the last 20 or so pages with much more references happening to the band's debut "Tigermilk". Being familiar with the series, I can understand the abstract reasoning behind record choices but this one felt especially peculiar. I also had to remind myself a couple times to take some of the ideas with a grain of salt since the book came out almost 10 years ago. Some of his points about blogging and the "current" state of music journalism are a bit out-dated, yet still some feel poignant. Mostly though, I felt like I was getting more of the author's perception than hard-lined facts. He bemoans that the Internet has lost the sense of community there was before, but skims over the rise of message boards and completely ignores communities like LiveJournal that would have perfectly fit the B&S audience. I think if he had brought in some research around Internet music culture and had sources to corroborate his ideas, it could have really taken this book to another level. I'd love to see a revised version of this book for the state of things in 2016.

While the ideas were a bit jumbled to me, I think there's still some great and insightful bits in this book. Plagenhoef does a great job of providing context on who the band was and has become, clearly being an expert on the issue. It hasn't converted me to a fan, but gave me more respect from the ideas they were conceived from.

[Juana · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The story of [If You’re Feeling] Sinister would be impossible to disentangle from the story of Tigermilk, and, like the story of most pop great music it’s more about what happens when music is released into the market place than when it’s created”. Having this sentence as part of the introduction, I should have expected to find a wider focus than simply the second album that Belle & Sebastian released in 1996, but for being the title of the book also the title of the album, one would have expected to find much more words about it.

I’m having a bipolar relationship with this book. On one hand, I found the writing style of Scott Plagenhoef flawless: a little professional but that could also be warm and sentimental at times, with a flow that could subtly take me from one theme to another one without abrupt changes. It is easy to notice that there was a deep investigation not only about the band but also about the times in which Belle & Sebastian developed. But I have to say that I felt that I read about everything except If You’re Feeling Sinister. Only towards the end, he dedicates a couple of pages to the lyrics of each of the tracks – but without giving a proper view on the album– as if he only wrote about them because he remembered that he had to.

You should know that if you’re willing to read this book then you should be ready to sink into a lake of nostalgia. When Scott Plagenhoef gets lost in its romanticism is when I personally found the book more sincere. But if nostalgia isn’t stopped it can lead to the criticism of the present, which for a young girl like me who simply couldn’t live in the past is rather annoying. I heard a thousand times that Internet ruined everything, but can we please start seeing its positive side or propose a solution? Although this book leaves you with the idea that If You’re Feeling Sinister is a unique and beautiful result of all the events of the band and the society around them, it also spits on the younger generation its uselessness.

I feel bad for criticizing this book since I partly truly enjoyed reading it. Unlike most books I read, I turned around the pages of If You’re Feeling Sinister while I was waiting at bus stops and waiting for the professor to arrive in the moments before a class. I thought the album was for people like me, living the immature routine of going to school every day, but maybe the book is for the ones who have already grown up.

[Bryan Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book more than I actually thought it was "good" - it was nice to spend a couple hours thinking about a band that I love and getting some insight into their backstory [some of which I knew already, but there was enough that was new to me to keep it interesting] and the cultural context in which they began. I also picked up a few pointers of similar bands to check out.

On the downside, we can start with the numerous definite typos--obviously missing words, more than can be forgiven, as well as sentences that are poorly written in the way that an editor should have fixed. Those just took me out of it. It was also curious/interesting to see declarative statements about the band's "weaker" material and "misteps"; seems to me those are matters of opinion, but I suppose that having a music worry as an author leads to specific language and little hedging. I'm also not so conversant in those early-2000s albums, not having listened to them in a while, so maybe the songs he derides really are that bad?

So that's maybe more a curious stylistic choice than something for me to criticize, but I definitely think it's strange that, for a book purportedly about a single album, Sinister doesn't emerge as any more of a focal point than any other material until 90 pages in, and by then we only have 15 pages left for a brief word on each individual song. I live that the 33 1/3 series gives writers free reign to approach albums in whatever way they choose, but I'd have assumed this book was about the birth of the band and Tigermilk if any album in particular.

Still, definitely worth reading if you're a Belle and Sebastian fan or curious about them, or just want a focused look at indie pop in the late '90s. Just don't expect it to really be about the album on the cover.