Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant

Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
Studio album by Belle & Sebastian
Released 6 June 2000
Recorded Cava Sound Workshops, Glasgow
Genre Chamber pop
Length 40:40
Label Jeepster
Producer Tony Doogan
Belle & Sebastian chronology

The Boy with the Arab Strap
(1998)		 Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
(2000)		 Storytelling
(2002)
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source Rating
Metacritic (68/100)[1]
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic [2]
The A.V. Club (positive)[3]
Entertainment Weekly (B)[4]
Mojo [5]
NME (8/10)[6]
Pitchfork Media (6.7/10)[7]
Q [8]
Rolling Stone [9]
Spin [10]
Stylus (B)[11]

Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant is the fourth album from the Scottish group Belle & Sebastian. The album was released to generally favourable reviews.[1] Fold Your Hands Child... features songs at a slower pace than their other albums, making it their most quiet and mellow album yet. The album is the closest the band has come to the chamber pop genre, as the instrumentation is mostly acoustic.

The band introduced many stylistic changes on this album, such as an organic strings section and more songs with lead vocals by other members of the band; Sarah Martin sings on "Waiting for the Moon to Rise", Isobel Campbell sings on "Family Tree", and performs duets with Stevie Jackson (who sings in an unusually low voice) on "Beyond the Sunrise" and Stuart Murdoch on "Women's Realm". Jackson also sings lead vocal on "The Wrong Girl". It is the last Belle & Sebastian album to feature bass player Stuart David, who departed the band after the album's completion.

The twin sisters pictured on the cover are Gyða and Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir both former members of the Icelandic experimental group múm.

The album's title comes from a piece of graffiti on a public toilet wall Stuart Murdoch had seen years earlier and remembered.[12]

The opening track "I Fought in A War" was used in the notable 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares. It was also used in the 2005 Eugene Jarecki documentary Why We Fight. The track "There's Too Much Love" was featured in the premiere trailer for the 2014 Brazilian film The Way He Looks and it is also featured in the film's soundtrack.

The book

Within the album's photography collection were pictures of two books, Beyond the Sunrise, and I Fought in a War. Both books are titles of songs on the album, but the books are fictional creations. Due to the band's interest in literature, fans have tried to locate the books that they believed had "inspired" the songs. Belle & Sebastian have informed fans about the fictive nature of the book on the "Questions and Answers" section of their website.[13]

Track listing

No. Title Length
1. "I Fought in a War"   4:09
2. "The Model"   3:56
3. "Beyond the Sunrise"   4:06
4. "Waiting for the Moon to Rise"   3:13
5. "Don't Leave the Light on Baby"   4:27
6. "The Wrong Girl"   3:21
7. "The Chalet Lines"   2:33
8. "Nice Day for a Sulk"   2:31
9. "Women's Realm"   4:35
10. "Family Tree"   4:04
11. "There's Too Much Love"   3:27

References

External links