Tigermilk

It's fine, won't be listening again. Lyrics are more interesting than the melodies. 3/5.

A bit of a mixed bag, but pretty nice.

Thought it was good. Didn’t really get into it too much. Will need to revisit, just wasn’t in the mood for this album when listening

I like Belle & Sebastian in this preppy, peppy, low key energetic mode. They have great songwriting chops and even on this debut have a unique, instantly recognisable sound which is theirs alone and still intact today. My favourite of their records, Dear Catastrophe Waitress, amps up the silliness and theatricality in a way that I always crave elsewhere across their discography. I could always handle them being slightly more unhinged!

I think some later B&S albums are even better (Sinister, Arab Strap), but this still an amazing debut, and an easy five stars

Fantastic album...love B&S. This one is honestly bangers front to back. 4.5/5

I wish I could die without hearing music of this nature ever again. I don't think it's technically bad, I just hate listening to it.

From limited pop culture references and context clues (ok, they were mentioned on an episode of How I Met Your Mother along with a clip of "We Rule The School"), I expected B&S to be a variation of quiet acoustic folk music. Upon listening to this, I'm pleasantly surprised to discover there's more to the story. It's not even just a duo of someone named Belle and someone named Sebastian! All of these songs were written by lead singer, Stuart Murdoch, and originally performed solo but they've been developed further to utilize a full band (including strings, brass, and woodwinds!). The album is much more indie rock than it is folk, and it's hard to imagine what the solo versions would have originally sounded like. I came in expecting Simon & Garfunkel, but got something more akin to a Paul Simon solo album.

Without a specific nostalgic reason to love this album, I don't. It's fine, but it doesn't wow me and I'm not at risk of making this my whole personality. I understand there are more B&S albums on the list, so we'll see if my opinion changes after those.

"Electronic Resistance" - feels like the biggest experiment on the album. It's a nice little New Wave bop nestled into the middle of the album and if I have to choose a favorite song, this would be it.

"I Could Be Dreaming" - I felt a little crazy when the female spoken word part started fading in. It's like listening to a song with a police siren when you're in the car - except you're not looking for cops, you're looking for a schizophrenia diagnosis.

"We Rule The School" - the song that formed my whole opinion of this band. It's pretty non-representative of the album/band, so I'm a little disappointed that HIMYM chose this song.

Brilliant early album with knockout songs that established B&S as leader of a new movement of twee pop.

Pleasant indie folk rock.

The Good: Milk, it does a body good!
The Bad: Turns out tigermilk is some kind of instrument…
The Ugly: the album cover…

This is my second B&S album I’ve seen on the list, and I do hope this is the last.
I’ve done the math, and with 1001 albums to go through since the 1950s, it means roughly 140 albums per decade… which is 14 per year… That’s a lot of albums if you think about it.

So, what did I think about Tigermilk? Not much, to tell the truth. It was okay. It didn’t ruin my day, like some other albums tend to do. But I was more interested in figuring out what a tigermilk instrument looks like, and then I couldn’t stop looking at the boobies of B&S founder, which led me into a whole retrospective about me getting older and becoming a dirty old man…

The few B&S fans that I know are all wimps… and that is the best way I can describe this music: whimpy. At least goths are scary…

2*

Some of this was decent, but not anything really worth returning to. I don't really think I'd consider this pop music, but it is probably better that way. 3/5

This is a pleasant surprise, I kind of knew I needed to listen to Belle & Sebastian more, but just never got around to it, and I liked this a lot. It comes across as really earnest and vulnerable. A lot of these songs are kind of low fidelity, and the sound here is sort of baroque and pleasant, and I think it makes this album come across as small, and I don't mean it in a bad way. Like this is very intimate and personal feeling and this even comes through in the lyrics, like the content here is serious, but never crushing to the listener, with a lot of these songs focusing on little day to day sadnesses and embarrassments and some victories too. I also noticed that on a lot of these songs, the vocals sound *very* similar to Nick Drake, and I think it works here. It serves as a good stylistic complement to the songwriting and aesthetics on display here. And speaking of the songwriting, I like a lot of these songs a lot. Expectations, The State I Am In, She's Losing It, We Rule The School and Mary Jo are some highlights here, but most of the material works very well. I'd also like to acknowledge Electronic Renaissance which is one of the only real stylistic departures here, and its kind of warm, analogue synth sound fits in well here, it isn't as jarring as it should be and is actually one of my favorite songs. Overall, this is a really great collection of alternative pop songs. It feels like a lot of attention to detail went into this album, and the sound is just extremely warm and pleasant and earnest, it's kind of like a really heavy blanket, and I'm into it.

"The State I'm In" is a great track and was rightfully ranked by pitchfork on their "best of the 90s" list. I enjoyed "Expectations" even more. Off to a great start!

If You're Feeling Sinister seems to be the better album by this group, however.

I'd been meaning to give this album a listen many years ago, but never did. It's very mellow and fluffy, nothing offensive, but equally nothing really excited me.

nice.

It was ok, I don't really enjoy this group but it's not that bad. Just not for me.

Nette Indie-Musik. 3 Sterne im positiven Sinn. Electric Renaissance ist für mich herausgestochen

Quite boring album

Enjoying this more than Sinister (which I gave a 3). She's Losing It is a fun and great singalong.
Just feels like its got more interesting instrumentation going on compared to Sinister.

Still Charlie Brown-ass music though.