Top 40 '90s albums, #31: Belle and Sebastian — The Boy With The Arab Strap

This isn’t the my favorite Belle and Sebastian album — it’s not particularly close to an album that will appear much later on the list, and one or two of their post-2002 albums would likely find their way into the top list, too.

The Boy With The Arab Strap is still an incredible album with a great list of timeless melodies and harmonies. It’s such a good follow-up to If You’re Feeling Sinister, which delighted both critics and teenage me. This was still in regular rotation during my high school years, and it still has some of my favorite B&S songs. The Boy With the Arab Strap feels like a moment captured in time. It’s Belle and Sebastian after they’d just gained a bit of traction with their first two albums, and they’ve come out strong. It’s me in high school, listening to this album and thinking about a failed romance of one sort or another.

When “It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career” started with just vocals and a bass, it captured my attention. It started slow and reflective, with the rest of the ensemble joining gradually. Halfway through, the song hits its stride, with a harmony of voices joining in with the piano, bass and guitar. “Sleep the Clock Around” was practically a bouncing dance track by the time it started — you know, that dancing-indie-kid 90s idea, right? “Is It Wicked Not to Care?”, frontend by Isobel Campbell’s signature breathy vocals, felt like something from a half-remembered dream. And the album only gets better from there, hitting its apex in the title track with a little rollicking bass line that always has me tapping my foot.

I don’t have any specific memories about this album. And that’s an interesting thing for me, because I’m certain I listened to it a lot. Nearly every song here is a perfect encapsulation of a band I’ve spent so much time thinking about. It even shows the band in transition — just a few years later, two key members, Isobel Campbell and Stuart David, would depart. And it’s hard to imagine this album without them — Isobel floats above the fray, and Stuart David underpins it.

Despite not having any specific memories around this album, it still transports me back sometimes — not every time, but when I’ve got my headphones on and can only barely hear the dishwasher running, groceries still only mostly put away, and a toddler’s toys in the nooks and crannies, this album finds a way to make me feel just a little like an awkward teenager again.