HELL’S BELLES!

Guitarist says all the Scots indie heroes wanna do is rock...

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN guitarist STEVIE JACKSON said that the band’s spectacular one-off benefit gig last weekend in GLASGOW has given them a new hunger to get back into the live arena.

Speaking after the intimate gig in front of 160 people at Nice N’ Sleazy – where they played covers including ‘Time For The Season For Living’ by The Zombies, Glenn Campbell‘s ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ and a medley of the theme from the Pink Panther – joined onstage by an eight-foot furry panther – and Sex Pistols‘ ‘Pretty Vacant’ – Jackson said the band won’t even begin thinking about a follow-up to last year’s Top 10 ‘Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like A Peasant’ until they’ve been on the road again.

“We’re not thinking towards the album yet, we should go out and play, get the singles out, go and play them and then think about an album. It would be quite good to get the energy from somewhere else, new impetus. We couldn’t go in and make another album now, it would be pretty boring really. We need revitalisation, and the gigs would be the way to do it. I don’t think anyone [in the band] is interested in doing an album right now.

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“After that gig we are all totally looking forward to playing live again, we really need to get out and play.” He added that the band may well introduce some “rock-out” older tracks from ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’ into the set and “make them funnier, maybe inject some humour into it.”

He said that the band are likely to release one of the two Eps that they are nearing completion early in the summer, another towards the end, and sandwich a UK tour in the middle, probably around June. “Nothing is ever written in stone with us, but that’s a vague idea,” he added.

As previously revealed on NME.COM, the band drafted in Mike Hurst from The Springfields for production duties on one of the new tracks.

“We just worked with him on one song that had quite a big production number, we had 23 people playing live at the one time like an orchestra, and wanted a guy in to direct on the day, make the decisions, and he was very good.”

He revealed that the song is called ‘I’m Waking Up To Us’ but said that no final decision had been made what EP it will feature on.

The band played two new songs played at the benefit gig – which raised #1200 for the Scottish Socialist Party’s Renfrew East candidate Aileen Nunnery, and also featured a set by Teenage Fanclub, Future Pilot AKA and The Ducks.

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They were ‘Jonathan And David’, which is likely to be on one of the Eps and an untitled Spanish-influenced track, which Jackson said will not feature on the singles. “It’s just a story song, about a guy and his girl, and redemption, being chased by folk… it’s just a funny song! Quite unusual. It will come out, but not on the Eps, it might come out later after that.”

As previously reported, >Belle And Sebastian recently recorded the soundtrack for a movie ‘Storytelling’ in New York.

NMEINDIE.COM will have the full exclusive Belle And Sebastian interview next week, so click back for more on the band’s long awaited live return.

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