in the dock: belle and sebastian

I've not been very good at directing people over to recent posts at the other site I blog on, The Art of Noise, which is a shame as there have been some terrific debates in the recent 'In The Dock' feature, where two bloggers debate the merits of a particular topic. This week it's been my turn, and myself and Jonathan from the ace Crinklybee site have traded blows over the much maligned / much loved Belle and Sebastian - I'm handling the case for the prosecution. The votes are rolling in in the comments box and we should know whose argument got the most votes by the end of the week.

Here's a couple of extracts from our argument. Click here to read the full thing and cast your vote.

Prosecution: "The germ of Belle & Sebastian’s music was, oddly and appropriately, rooted in sickness. Stuart Murdoch, the band’s main songwriter and driving force, took to songwriting late, and only did so during an extended bout of illness in the early 1990s. This tells you almost everything you need to know about Belle & Sebastian."

Defence: "Look, we know Stuart Murdoch can’t really sing; it’s all part of the indiepop aesthetic, like wearing your grandad’s cardigans and spending November afternoons on park benches gazing across the boating lake and pining after that girl on 2nd year Humanities with the perfect 60s bob and the long big-buttoned pale-blue raincoat. Anyway, if you took Stuart Murdoch out of Belle & Sebastian and replaced him with some show-off who could actually sing, like the bloke out of Wet Wet Wet or, I don’t know, Luciano Pavarotti, then, well, it wouldn’t sound quite right, would it? "

Meanwhile, here are the previous debates you may have missed:
- In the Dock - R&B (verdict)
- In the Dock - The Levellers (verdict)
- In the Dock - Songs with associated dance moves (verdict)
- In the Dock - The Eurovision Song Contest (verdict)
- In the Dock - The Beatles (verdict)