Many songs are short stories in disguise; ‘Nobody’s Empire’, by Belle and Sebastian, is one of them. You can just see the “I” of the first line, remembering the “girl that sung like the chime of a bell”. The narrative arch of their story stretches in mysterious directions, as its narrator remembers the future, and the girl (now a mother of two) “marching with the crowd, singing dirty and loud”. It reminds me of my room in Whitstead, the window open onto the garden, on the edge of Newnham grounds; the safest place to dream from. The lyrics unfold against the bright texture of the music, radiant as a moment that’s just about to become memory: “If I had a camera I’d snap you now/ Cause there’s beauty in every stumble”.
In the album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Matador, 2015
A Personal Anthology 