Arab Strap Not Included

As the current crop of music-related DVDs should make clear, the DVD format offers an appealing creative outlet for bands who shy away from videos, or alternatively, aren't mainstream enough to have their videos played on MTV or VH1. Admittedly, VHS may have had the same potential, but the superior quality and menu-based navigability of DVDs is far more hospitable to unconventional, non-feature-film productions. Belle and Sebastian's new DVD, bearing the somewhat tongue-in-cheek title Fans Only, is an exemplary display of the possibilities of the format. Comprised of home-movie footage, live performances, and more traditional music videos (both amateur and professional), Fans Only is a perfect appendix to Belle and Sebastian's recordings, adding a rich sense of place--Scotland, primarily--and personality to an already impressive body of work.

There is certainly some amount of irony and pleasant surprise in the fact that Belle and Sebastian, a band once notorious for not granting interviews and refusing to be photographed, has created such an intimate and personal document for commercial release. Possible reasons for the band's change of heart can perhaps be detected in the content of Fans Only. Arranged in chronological order, the disc begins with homemade footage, most of it, interestingly enough, shot on film rather than video. As the band catapults to stardom before our eyes, the intimate and homey clips of uninhibited screwing around--or "mucking about," as a Brit might put it--are replaced by more typically professional live performances and talk show appearances. Over the course of the DVD, Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch and guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Stevie Jackson ditch their t-shirts in favor of suits (much in the fashion of Radiohead's Thom Yorke), learn how to position themselves as rock stars, and decide that it's okay to dance. Fans Only, then, not only details the ascent of Belle and Sebastian's career, but at the same time chronicles the band's development of a public persona, and its members' growing comfort with celebrity-style exhibitionism. Not that there's necessarily a problem with that; rather, it's quite inspiring to see what seem to be genuinely sweet and humble individuals on stage before crowds of thousands. Nevertheless, the real highlights of the DVD are the earlier self-produced clips. Appearing as traditional narratives ("Lazy Line Painter Jane"), free-form costume play in the Scottish countryside ("Is It Wicked Not To Care?"), or random assemblages of band footage ("I Could Be Dreaming"), all of the clips are sunny and childlike, playful but melancholy, much like the music that accompanies them.

Fans Only isn't a structured, stand-alone work, nor does it pretend to be. Rather, it's a kind of musical scrapbook, a collection of images and music without documentary intention that nonetheless conveys a great deal about Belle and Sebastian. The rather long running time (over two hours) makes piecemeal digestion preferable to single-sitting consumption, but none of the footage seems particularly dull or unnecessary. In fact, the DVD actually makes it apparent how well the concert film/home movie pastiche works, and whets the appetite for other similar productions (one from Ted Leo is on the way in late February). Fans Only is good, simple fun, and makes us want to put all possible criticism aside to watch, listen, and bask in its multimedia loveliness.