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Tigermilk Turns 20

Belle And Sebastian released Tigermilk, their first album, 20 years ago today, but I didn't hear it then. Neither did you. Neither did practically anyone. The band self-released the album, limiting it 1,000 copies. This wasn't because they figured only 1,000 people would want to hear these songs. Even as modest as they may have been, Stuart Murdoch and his co-conspirators must've known they had something here. Tigermilk isn't some basement four-track recording; it's a set of lush, orchestrated, fully realized old-school pop songs, all recorded in full and lovely clarity. Rather, Tigermilk, at least on some level, was part of Murdoch's grand plan. It could've been a happy accident — a bunch of Murdoch's songs, recorded with a group of near-strangers, for a music-business class. But Murdoch liked how bands like the Smiths always had some mysterious unheard records haunting collectors' shelves. He was into the idea that a band could have some vast shadow history lingering somewhere. So