Belle & Sebastian Close For New Pornographers
Last Saturday night Seattlest was shivering outside the Paramount waiting for the friend-with-the-tickets to show up for the New Pornographers/Belle and Sebastian show. From our vantage point, we watched as the doors opened and the line poured into the Paramount, a standing wave forming a few feet before the marquee, as people held up their cell phones to take a picture in case of massive cerebral trauma rendering them unable to remember where they were later on.
Vancouver's New Pornographers, a band of which we are especially fond, opened with a 55-minute set. They're touring for their new album Twin Cinema, a jangly-guitared, crunching-chorded collection of indie-rock. It sounded like "The Bleeding Heart Show," "Testament to Youth in Verse," "Sing Me Spanish Techno," and "From Blown Speakers" made some converts among the tartan-clad. It was a blistering set, and then suddenly it was over and we all cooled it for half an hour.
Not being "up" on Belle and Sebastian -- we've heard that sinister minister song more than a few times, though -- we were surprised to hear the change in their sound. No more the shy lo-fi, a-poet-addresses-the-fickle-ear pose: Belle and Sebastian trotted out a funkier, electronica-tinged grab-bag from their album The Life Pursuit for this last date of their U.S. tour.
We heard "Song for the Sunshine," "Sukie in the Graveyard," "Judy and the Dream of Horses," "The Boy with the Arab Strap," "Fox in the Snow," and "Belle and Sebastian," and plenty others in their two-hour set. There was some hand-clapping, trumpet, xylophone, and bass lines galore. Someone named Holly from Arkansas who'd won a chance to sing with the band got up and sang a song we're not familiar with and was cheered lustily. Personally, we felt some of it sounded like a bastard child of the Monkees and the Partridge Family -- not in a bad way, you understand, but sui generis (a little Latin meaning "not in a bad way, you understand").
New sound aside, Stuart Murdoch is still very much...Stuart. He's very personable, and had the crowd eating out of his hand. He mentioned how special the night was, how Belle and Sebastian fit the Paramount like a glove, how intelligent the audience was (asking for a hand count of professors and doctors), and chatted away between songs every chance he got.
It's always odd to sit in a crowd and not quite match the prevailing level of enthusiasm. We tried. It was easy to enjoy the tunefulness and wordplay -- but we could never quite escape the feeling that the style was an elaborate parody of becardiganned artistic sensitivity. Whatever. We walked back to Capitol Hill with the last tune humming in our head, and counted it a good evening.
(Photo thanks shout-out to Derektor!)
