Breakfast with Belle & Sebastian: The Abba-style jukebox musical

Part two of our extensive interview with Belle & Sebastian investigates the creative process behind Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, and their time in Atlanta with famed producer Ben Allen. By all accounts a period of artistic upheaval and a throwing-out of the Belle & Sebastian rule book, the result is an album of songs that sound bigger and brighter than ever before. Stuart Murdoch discusses the unexpected creation of what is (probably) the first disco track ever written about Sylvia Plath, and the band talk about their future. Will we ever see Belle & Sebastian, the musical?

The Skinny: The general consensus at The Skinny seems to be that this is the album you’ve been on the brink of making for years… and now it’s finally here. What d’you reckon?

Sarah: Aww!
Richard: Well, that’s very nice!
Stevie: Actually, you know what, I agree with that. I think it’s one of our best records. I mean, I genuinely think it is. I’ve had more of a kick out of this album than I have any of them for a long time, that we’ve made. Going by my own personal feelings about it.
Chris: I suppose I didn’t see it coming… on the last record, we hoped that would turn out quite dancy but nobody really seemed to say that it was. To us it was, but maybe the fact that people are saying it about this record means that in some way we’ve executed it better, this time around?
Stuart: We did have a great producer. But let’s face facts, and I’m not taking anything away from Tony Hoffer, because Tony Hoffer is amazing, but if we’d gone back to him with this record…
Richard: It’d be totally different.
Stuart: It could have sounded a lot like Pursuit, or Catastrophe Waitress. Ben (Allen) could really handle this material, ‘cause there was a real strain when we made this record, between the songwriter and the producer – believe me, I was straining. It was hard work, and we were fighting a lot. But in that middle ground, something came out that was good.

It’s rumoured that Ben Allen encouraged you to work in quite an atypical way for yourselves, less finished, more improvised?

Sarah: Well, he was improvising with us. He turned us into building blocks, so… it was a little unnerving at first, until you realised that when he says he’s got what he needs, he’s got what he needs. He’s just going to add this to that, and where something appeared in a song was entirely disconnected from where you’d actually played it. He shifted things about quite a lot.

So have you had to relearn the songs, ready for tour?

Sarah: Yes! There’s been a lot of going through, like “so there are horns in there!” Sneaky bastard, sneaky bastard.
Stuart: Chris has been very much engaged in this business.
Stevie: It’s unbelievable.
Sarah: All songs now come in infographic form, with where all the parts belong and stuff.
Chris: Let me show you! I had to make a diagram for every song, so I can learn how to play them…[shows off photos of incredibly complicated diagrams]
Richard: Chris was up ‘til three in the morning after rehearsals, trying to work out what the hell’s going on! It’s like WW2 code.
Sarah: Ben just puts lots and lots of things together, so the sounds gets bigger and more complex. You can’t quite tell where one thing ends and the next one begins.

There’s a part on Play For Today where the backing vocals kick in and it’s huge. It’s like... a Lion King moment, holding baby Simba aloft. Amazing.

Stuart: Holding baby Simba aloft, that could be an album title.
Stevie: You’ll get credits.
Stuart: It’s certainly an idea for the show at the Hydro...
Sarah: Yeah… Ben would make like, a wall of sound out of us. It’d take fifteen minutes, then he’d have that as a pallet to work from. For textures and that. And obviously, he’s done it before and it’s one of his tricks, but it was good that he got us in a slightly jetlagged and befuddled state; we were just doing what we were told. And then when you listen back, you’re like “Ooh what’s that? that sounds ama-azing!”
Chris: It was a massive education, working with him. Just philosophically, you pick up so much. Work fast, don’t overthink. Don’t stop an idea halfway; see it through and then decide after, whether to use it or not. And to make things sound big, it’s easy: just play less. Play into the effects, let the effects do the work. Soon you’re just playing the absolute bare minimum to convey the information necessary for the music, and there’s this absolutely enormous sound coming out the speakers. It’s so simple.  
Stuart: It was difficult, it was difficult. It wasn’t quite... divisive, but it was definitely an atmosphere.
Chris [to Stuart]: And especially because of the way the working day’s planned out, a lot of stuff goes on in the studio when you’re not there. Especially when we’d been involved in a part and then [Stuart] first heard it… I think it was a bit of a shock.
Stuart: Yeah, you could probably set your watch to the time when I would lose it. I would lose it every eight days; every eight working days I’d just fucking lose it. “What has happened to the fucking song?”... you know. “I don’t recognise this, it wasn’t meant to be… and now it’s turned into this?”  
Chris: And then you’d turn one monitor down, turn an effect down, and suddenly everything would be okay.
Stuart: I’d do like a ten minute shuffle on the decks, and then I’d be like “ok, ok, wow. I just needed to know that.”

There’s a lot of literary influence throughout the album. Sylvia Plath, references of verse and structure and playwriting.

Stuart: I think, actually, I’m playing with literature as nostalgia, not as a present day thing. I left books behind; I don’t read very much now. There was this concentrated period in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s when I was absorbed by literature, it kind of changed my mind - as it does, as it should do. And so it’s almost nostalgically that I’m talking about that feeling. But, you know, The Bell Jar will never change me again, The Catcher In The Rye will never change me again, On The Road will never… but they did at the time, they certainly did. Enter Sylvia Plath is about a person who’s been liberated by literature…But it possibly could have been any of those authors. Kafka, as well, Kafka used to drive me up the wall. Kafka literally drove me round the bend, I was living in a bedsit, and reading those books all through the night, and waking up in the morning, walking down the street looking for insects, for guys with daggers. It was a really paranoid time.

Could all these literary influences lead into something more? After your experience with God Help The Girl, what other directions could we see Belle & Sebastian take, in future?

Sarah: Belle & Sebastian, the Panto!
Stuart: These days it seems that people always make a film or something, nobody makes anything new… All these ideas are based on stories from the past, so maybe we could write something about our history as a band and people would eat it up in spoons.
Sarah: Are you thinking some kind of Abba-style jukebox musical?
Stuart: But it’s very easy to keep things interesting. I often come in saying, oh, I want to do an instrumental album next time. Or maybe an LP that just features other singers completely. I often think I’d love to do a song with Cyndi Lauper, or…
Chris: I just think, whether the band’s still going or not [in ten years time], we’ll all still be making music. Because, if you’ve spent twenty five years honing a craft, then… what are you going to do? 
Richard: Start making furniture?
Sarah: I’d have to relearn how to make coffee.

I’m a rubbish waitress, so I hope that’s not my job forever.

Sarah: [laughing] Ooh, are you... a Catastrophe Waitress? 

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"It could become church music, it could become reggae; believe me, we can do these things" – Belle and Sebastian on their electronic renaissance