In this week's Philadelphia Weekly there was an article about the similarities between the two bands. The author, Joey Sweeny, tells us that he poured over the album sleeves of the Smiths and then Belle and Sebastian trying to look for key connections between the two.

He says, "I'll be damned if foolishness is going to stop from proving once and for all, that Belle and Sebastian and the Smiths were, in every Weekly World News sense of the term separated at birth." He goes on to explain, "Lyrically the tone of Tigermilk is frozen in the same sort of sweaty, desperate and ultimately sexless regret that characterizes the most compelling parts of the early Smiths stuff- i.e. "Hand in Glove," "Reel Around the Fountain" and "Rusholme Ruffians." But for B&S, that sort of alienation takes on theme-park proportions."

This writer is obviously a major fan of both bands, and I am as well; however I cannot agree with his separated at birth theory. The bands stand for two different ways of getting things accomplished. B&S are far more childlike, whimsical if you like. Where as I have always felt that Morrissey was trying to grapple with the inequalities of adulthood through his lyrics, once he discovered that one can never truly return to that innocence. He has never been afraid to mention what is unpleasant and vulgar. B&S are far more about denying that reality. Both have their charms, but it is inaccurate to lump them together in such a way.