Letters Have No Arms !: god help the girl

Friday, April 3, 2009

The (sort of) return of Belle & Sebastian!: God Help the Girl

I can't believe how silently this entered and exited this week's music news:

The (sort of) return of Belle & Sebastian !

God Help the Girl, 'a story set to music', is a project dreamed up by Stuart Murdoch some years ago when touring Belle & Sebastian's album Dear Catastrophe Waitress. According to GhtG's Myspace page, the idea came to Stuart as follows:

"I was out for a run and I got this tune in my head and it occurred to me that it wasn't a Belle & Sebastian song. I could hear female voices and strings, I could hear the whole thing, but I just couldn’t envisage myself singing it with the group.”

As one tune became two and two became three, Stuart set out to find vocalists for these songs. Over 400 entries made their way to Stuart's inbox, and he invited a number of them to come in and try out the songs (see video). Several of these vocalists made it onto the resulting album. Taking centre stage on these is Catherine Ireton, who took lead vocals on most of the songs on the album. You may well already know , or at least recognise her, from the cover of B&S' 2006 'White Collar Boy' single. Or you may well have heard her as one half of the rather lovely The Go Away Birds, who sound a bit like Hannah & Sam.

The record? Not having heard much of it yet, I'll have to go by the description given, which tells us that it 'draws equally on musicals, sixties’ girl groups, eighties’ indie and, most of all, classic pop records'. While Catherine Ireton somewhat resembles Kate Jackson of the Long Blondes, and has a voice seemingly born to sing Stuart Murdoch's songs. The album also features various other members of Belle & Sebastian.