(Scroll me!) Last night I went to see Belle and Sebastian perform Tigermilk at the Albert Hall. It was probably one of the best shows I have ever been to see solely because Belle and Sebastian mean an awful lot to me and it was so nice. I first listened to Tigermilk when I was like 14 because my mum had the CD and I thought the cover looked cool. I fell in love with it immediately and it was one of those albums that really saved my life in secondary school. Belle and Sebastian to the core is a band for uncool working class kids who sat alone at lunch reading James Joyce novels and listening to The Smiths. And that really was me as a kid.

The song 'Expectations', although not being my favourite music-wise appealed to me so much with the lyrics. Its about an outcasted and isolated weird girl at secondary school who loves The Velvet Underground and dreams of being an artist instead of working in a shop, and that described me to a T in secondary school. The song is telling this girl to keep being unabashedly weird and that everything will get better and that meant the absolute world to me when I was that age. It still does, I cry every time I listen to it ha. But seeing that live yesterday was one of the best moments of life because I am still that weird girl in everything I do and God it heals that part of me that hurt so much in school.

A big theme in their early albums is these narratives of working class life. Rather than the angst of their influences like The Smiths, they saw the joy in the monotony of it, and took joy in their uncoolness and rejection of these standards rather than lamenting about it. There is no word big enough to describe what that did for me as a teenager and how much it meant to me. Seeing it live just reignited this joy in me, and I'm just ecstatic. Seeing live music for me generally being autistic is like a religious experience (remind me to do another post on this), to see an album live which I have such an emotional connection to is so incredible. GOD BLESS LOSERS EVERYWHERE!

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