For many, Belle And Sebastian are more of a concept than a band.
A badge of honour for the sensitive, bookish, introverted types who prefer to commit feelings to paper than to others and had they been born a decade earlier would have been preaching the same rhetoric about The Smiths. For many, this is all B&S are, their distinct lack of machismo and comfort with tweeness repelling those who prefer their music to be shouted along at summer festivals.
You could argue that it's the band's fans who give them this air of defensive inaccessibility. Few artists command such loyal, dedicated fanaticism as B&S – even as it approaches 20 years since the recording of ‘Tigermilk’.
The first thing I notice on arrival are droves of 30-something, cardiganed people crammed patiently at the front before Melbourne’s Twerps have even taken to the stage in order to increase their chances of being in Stuart Murdoch's eye line. It seems some things never change. The turbulence following the wildly successful ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ arguably broke the momentum that could have propelled the band to superstardom. The resulting aftermath has left B&S in a relatively unique position, never quite reaching the commercial success you'd expect for a band with such a consistent and high quality control, but allowing them to continue to explore and push their sound, safe in the knowledge their fans will stay loyal no matter what.
Openers Twerks, whose self-declared ‘janky pop’ (singer Marty Frawley clarifies that it’s not jangle pop or dull wave) is fittingly played in the city that gave us The Go-Betweens. Promoting their strong, second album, ‘Range Anxiety’, their distinct sound blows by like a cooling breeze perfect in the summer. As each song drifts by it feels as though their set is over before it even feels like it’s begun.
Twerps - Image © Steven MorganWhether this is a good thing or not is hard to say, but before I had too much time to ponder it, the multitude of musicians touring as Belle And Sebastian filtered onto the stage to the sound of a rapturous audience.
What those who write B&S off don't realise is how much fun they are. Perhaps as a reaction to the static reputation of B&S fans, latest album ‘Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance’ incorporates dance-music tropes into their trademark sound in a surprisingly successful marriage. "Isobel said this sounded like a pub-rock song," Stuart interjected at the end of ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’, shrugging as though that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
They're entertainers, dazzling the crowd with scissor kicks and awkward dancing, unperturbed even by a fight in the crowd which prompted a round of applause mid song as the epicentre was kindly escorted from the venue by the helpful security. The set opened with new-album highlight ‘Nobody’s Empire’, a somewhat poignant song documenting Stuart's struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome, as the jetlagged band later confess their earlier debate into what day it was. Upping the tempo with a disco beat ‘The Party Line’ follows, a rare example of a B&S song that wouldn't sound out of place at a club, though what club I’m not sure.
The set draws generously from their back catalogue, which now expands nine studio albums. Older, more crowd-pleasing, popular songs increased in frequency as the set progressed, acknowledged by Stuart with a visual representation of an excitement curve of the set – it was a little like a ridiculous Usain Bolt impression. By the time they played a succession of tracks from ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ with Stuart acknowledging the set list imbalance the crowd were eating out of their hands.
B&S - Image © Steven MorganIt's easy to wonder what B&S have left to prove at this stage of their career. With a songwriter as gifted as Murdoch, there's always been the risk of them disappearing into conceptual quagmires as The Magnetic Fields have done. However, despite the similar intellectualisation of song craft, the key difference is an optimistic playfulness to B&S that makes you think that should their past have taken them in a similar trajectory as their Usain Bolt graph then by now they would have been belting out hits to cheering, stadium-sized audiences and enjoying it.
B&S with fans - Image © Steven MorganStuart Murdoch is 47 years old this year and if anything, he seems to be enjoying himself. He playfully changes the set list based on crowd requests (or rather crowd a capella renditions of entire verses), invites people on stage to dance with them as they play, and even closes out the show in a tacky, Australia-emblazoned singlet belting out the unrehearsed ‘The Blues Are Still Blue’ by audience request, just as any self-respecting pub-rock band would do.
Stuart Murdoch - Image © Steven MorganBelle And Sebastian don't take themselves as seriously as some people seem to think, and perhaps that’s why they've managed to last so long. Though there are many that never pay more attention to a Belle and Sebastian announcement than a snide comment, they continue to reward those who have stuck by them.
If this show is anything to go by, they will continue to do so for some time to come.
