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MP3 Live: Belle & Sebastian...rock?
The Scottish indie-folk troupe overcome a poor choice of venue by sampling the best of their upbeat discography.
Belle & Sebastian dropped into San Francisco for a tour stop Tuesday night, but having outgrown its typical midsize venues, the Scottish band had to endure an oddly shaped, mismatched former railway station.
Belle & Sebastian's
The Life Pursuit
But in typical fashion for a band that has built a cult following over the past decade, it seized the opportunity by rolling out some of its rarely played oldies to compensate for the fact that much of the crowd was seemingly a football field away in the long, narrow venue.
In town to promote their latest album, The Life Pursuit, the band played at the Concourse at the San Francisco Design Center. Normally reserved for trade shows and large events, it has been hosting more concerts lately, including the Strokes.
For a band like B&S, more is not always better, particularly since the venue is narrower and skinnier than B&S's waif-like emo fans. The hall's configuration gave everyone a center seat, but only a handful a close-up view.
This fish-out-of-water setting was not lost on frontman Stuart Murdoch, who partway through the near-two-hour set indicated that the band was offsetting the fact that many of its longtime fans were barely within binocular range by playing some of its rarely played oldies.
"You've probably noticed we're playing a lot of our old songs," Murdoch proclaimed. "That's for obvious reasons."
The oldies, including "The Stars of Track and Field" off of 1997's If You're Feeling Sinister, provided a stark reminder that B&S has the distinction of being instrumental in the formation of not one, but two musical genres that have splintered from the standard "rock" moniker.
While Sinister paved the way for the "emo" scene, 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress put the band at the forefront of the "twee" pop movement, known for its sweet melodies and lyrics and jangly guitars.
It's not an insult to say that Belle & Sebastian does not rock in the traditional sense of the word, but The Life Pursuit provides ample material for the band to sway the masses and dispel the notion of their niche as an easy listening indie band. This was particularly true with a few power-pop tracks that followed the opener such as "Sukie In The Graveyard"and "Funny Little Frog," songs that would feel at home on the streets of Glasgow during the swinging '60s or groovy '70s.
With a few hours to fill and a catalog of songs that includes no filler, B&S bounced around their library at will, playing several songs from the band's rarer EPs (perhaps now more crowd-friendly because most were recently compiled on the double-CD Push Barman to Open Wounds) such as "Dog on Wheels" and "Your Cover's Blown" (from the Books EP) in addition to their more popular fare.
When Murdoch yielded the microphone and spotlight to Stevie Jackson to sing "Jonathan David," he used the off time to get a little closer to his fans--one in particular. Murdoch extended his hand into the crowd and pulled out a female fan from the sea of adoring spectators. The two danced about like schoolchildren on the first day of summer, simultaneously out-energizing the largely well-behaved crowd of young hipsters.
As the band opened with the first track off Sinister, it was only appropriate to sate the crowd's appetite for the Belle & Sebastian of yesteryear by finishing the 17-song main set with the same album's closer, the stellar "Judy and the Dream of Horses." The first strums of the song's chords immediately got the crowd buzzing, and evolved into a near frenzy as the pace picked up, the organ howled, and the trumpets roared.
The band's encore had more in store for longtime fans, as the second song in the two-song follow-up was "The Boy With the Arab Strap," a tune whose somber lyrics belie the ironic cheerfulness of the delightful pianos and rolling beat. Somber lyrics or not, the crowd was more than happy to sing along with Murdoch and send the band off on what was the show's highlight.
With a strong finish that made many forget the mismatched venue, it was clear that yes, Belle & Sebastian can indeed rock.
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