“Make a new cult every day to suit your affairs”

Whimsical, bookish, acerbic and witty, usually in the same stanza, Belle and Sebastian are a fab Scottish indie band, formed in 1994.

The State I Am In
I was happy for a day in 1975
I was puzzled by a dream
It stayed with me all day in 1995
My brother had confessed he was gay
It took the heat off me for a while
He stood up with a sailor friend
Made it known upon my sister’s wedding day.

Expectations
Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange
Making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay

A Century of Fakers
If you ever go lardy, or go lame
I will drop you straight away

This is Just a Modern Rock Song
I put my arm around her waist
She put me on the ground with judo

I’m not as sad as Dostoevsky
I’m not as clever as Mark Twain
I’ll only buy a book for the way it looks
And then I stick it on the shelf again

The Boy With the Arab Strap
You’re constantly updating your hit parade of your ten biggest wanks

Put The Book Back on the Shelf
You wrote a book about yourself
The people left it on the shelf

Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying
Oh, get me away from here, I’m dying
Play me a song to set me free
Nobody writes them like they used to
So it may as well be me
Here on my own now after hours
Here on my own now on a bus
Think of it this way you could either be successful or be us

Stay Loose
Television is hysterical laughter of people

I Know Where the Summer Goes
When your underarm smells
and your kitchen looks like hell

Fox in the Snow
Fox in the snow
Where do you go
To find something you can eat?
Cause the word out on the street is
You are starving