It's a bit of a shock to find that it's almost 20 years since the 1990s began. Musically, I'm old enough to remember what was going on in British music from the off. "Baggy" Madchester music started it all off, there was the rave explosion of 1991-1992 (Bass Generator, Oceanic, even The Prodigy), then there several years of increasingly soulless dance music (e.g. Snap's "Rhythm Is A Dancer") before Oasis and Blur reminded everyone of the merits of the electric guitar. Dub-influenced electronica countered this brash confidence, with Tricky, Portishead and Massive Attack leading an inspired, pessimistic wave of electronica. But then came the Spice Girls, who reinvigorated the pop world and ultimately led to its demise, as successive manufacured bands (Boyzone, Westlife, et cetera et fucking cetera) completely emasculated the power of the independent performer and gave it to the Svengali manager/producer type. Which led us to Simon Cowell and the idea of pop music as pure commodity, only judged by popularity, and completely without cultural significance. (Insipid covers of 60s songs only reinforce the utter poverty of this approach.)

Rant over...

People tend to think of Britpop when it comes to 90s British music, but there was so many countervailing trends as to make the idea of a generic "90s music" as ridiculous as pigeon-holing any other decade. (It always irritates me when I see "Greatest Hits of the 70s!" type compilations which are all the glam, disco hits - where's the punk? the reggae? the prog?). So the album I'd like to nominate - no, to proclaim - as the best British album of the 1990s, Belle and Sebastian's "The Boy With The Arab Strap".

Released in 1998, it came out at a time when Britpop was dying from its excesses (see Oasis: Be Here Now) and manu-pop was in the asendancy. Being neither, it was missed by the pop markey but instead built on the word-of-mouth successes of their previous two albums, and the three EPs after their sophomore effort, If You're Feeling Sinister". It in fact reached #12 in the British album charts and earned the group "Best Newcomer" in the 1999 Brit Awards, much to the chagrin of acts like Steps and 5ive (a good indicator of the tension between quality and success).

So why's it so good? Let me take you, dear reader, by the hand and let's look at its numerous superlative qualities.

Music
Belle and Sebastian are sometimes labelled "chamber pop", which means they use more instruments than your average pop or rock group, without going as far as employing the sterotypical orchestra for like, totally emotive sections (see Metallica, Guns N' Roses etc etc). Cellos, violins, trumpets, pianos and trumpets enrich and broaden the musical pallete, but, importantly, they are not overblown, as rock bands are so fond of doing. They are employed subtly and with great refinement, in the manner of Nick Drake for example, or with the Velvet Underground's more subtle, less-is-more arrangements (such as "Pale Blue Eyes" or "I'm Set Free").

"Sleep The Clock Around" is a great illustration of this technique. It fades in quietly, hypnotically, vocals murmured. But as it goes on, it gradually builds in colour, charge, potency and musical richness, to an ending on an incredible feeling of hope, defiance, yearning, wishing and desire, articulated (not embarrassingly, which is remarkable) by a bagpipe's wail. It's all about the build-up, the almost drap opening important because of the colour and potency and feeling of the ending - just as Philip Larkin often started his poems with everyday colloquialisms and ended on transcendentals. (And like Philip Larkin, both examine the everyday and find the sublime - as in the soaring strings which end "Dirty Dream #2" or the dream of laziness in "A Summer Wasting").

Belle and Sebastian have no bombast - their songs are often musically delicate miniatures. But this does not mean they are insubstantial! They are extremely potent, just as a poem can have greater emotive force than a novel. The shimmering beauty of "Is It Wicked Not To Care?" and the childlike whimsy of "A Space Boy Dream" could not be sustained across an album without becoming tiresome. Instead, they are intriguing, suggestive of private dreams and epiphanies.

Lyrics
Belle and Sebastian's lyrics are consistently stunning poetic vignettes. They have all the hallmarks of greatness - humour, wit, compassion, a sharp eye, felicity, and technique, and easily compare with the great lyricists in pop and rock, such as Roger Waters, Nick Drake, Morrissey and Patti Smith. Their general subject matter is the daydreamers, losers and could-have-beens, sometimes compassionately, sometimes waspishly (and the sting comments on the sweet music to great effect). Let's just look at some examples, which show how good they are better than I can. :-)

She had a stroke at the age of 24
It could have been a brilliant career
Getting clients to finance her strategies
Filling time in on Safeways on Saturday
She wears the clothes of an emperor
But her paintings are a sham
And they're going for a grand
When the dealers come to view
Do they ever see the real you?
- It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career

Take Judy, with her bow and arrow, she's a mastermind
Too frumpy for the teenage population of her time
Car coat, she has a quilted jacket with a hood if it rains
Big pockets for the pharmaceuticals she takes to fix her brain
- The Rollercoaster Ride

Met the cigarette girl- took a note of her charms
But no cigar
- Chickfactor

The other astronauts were going to be my dad and my sister
My dad would come first after me
- A Space Boy Dream

And the puzzle will last till somebody will say
'There's a lot to be done while your head is still young'
If you put down your pen, leave your worries behind
Then the moment will come, and the memory will shine
- Sleep The Clock Around

Promises of fame, promises of fortune
LA to New York- San Francisco back to Boston
Has he ever seen Dundee?
Won't he hire a limousine?
Seymour bring her back to me
- Seymour Stein

I think those speak for themselves. Fantastic.

There's also several nice touches which deserve further mention. At the end of "Summer Wasting" which until then had repeatdly mentioned the "seven weeks" of reading papers, feeling guilty etc, it finally becomes "seven months of staying up all night", so that the lazy summer becomes a wasted year. The title track has a chirpy rhythm but has a stinging, scathing portrait of someone "making free with your lewd and lascivious boasts" who "We all know you are soft cause we've all seen you dancing / We all know you are hard cause we all saw you drinking from noon / Until noon again". And the portrait of three failures in "It Could Have Been A Briliant Career" is savage, especially the closoing couplet, "And you can tell by the way she looks he is sorry and resigned / As he wets himself for the final time". Bittersweet tales, compassionate character sketches and stinging satire mix easily on a chiming, wonderfully lush musical frame.

Conclusion
The conclusion is obvious. "The Boy With The Arab Strap" is a fucking amazing album, one which is incredibly articulate musically and verbally, and has enormous heart, imagination and compassion. Buy it.

(What do you mean, you've never heard of it?)