Nicely jumpered skinny students suck feverishly on white-pack Silk Cut surrogate tits and titter tweely at every feeble onstage witticism. Oh! It's all so oh-so coy and warm and happy-clappy cosy! This ever-so-slappable crowd of shit-eating indie-schmindie sheep are apparently not even slightly pissed off that they've had to queue outside in the freezing rain for over an hour (while a B&S employee tossed them compensatory ice-creams). "Integrity seems to be the key word," mumbles singer Stuart Murdoch (apropos absolutely f-ing nothing) to general laughter and a smattering of clapping. "Wanky, half-arsed, cackhanded and utterly insulting amateurism," would be closer to the f-ing mark (don't piss on me and tell me it's raining, twat). This is the matinee show. Belle & Sebastian have sold out Manchester's amazing Victorian town hall twice in one day. The perform in the round, the stage a speaker-stacked black modernist slab slapped in the exact centre of a stunning gothic-arched and gold-leafed beige-stone Christmas cake. The acoustics are thus totally f-ed and the insultingly desultory attempts at audience communication (during the frequent equipment breakdowns) reduced to mere whispered mumblings. And yet, despite the fact that Belle & Sebastian's sole trick is to combine piss-poor sub-Don McLean lyrics with nicked Kirsty MacColl riffs, there is the merest whiff of real magic here. Even the most cynical folkophobic would find it hard not to twitch and shudder with near sexual pleasure at the throbbing muscle layered upon tracks like "The Stars Of Track And Field" and "The Fox In The Snow" (the recorded versions of which remain puke-inducingly whimsical and twee). But it's never enough to overcome the overwhelming stench of smug, cutesy-wutesy, mumsy-wumsy, Jack Straw-approved suburban shite. Manchester Town Hall is an over-the-top, totally in-your-face and utterly awesome shrine to late-Victorian bourgeois triumphalism. Today it showcases a band who, more than any other, epitomise the tediously understated, wilfully inadequate and teeth-grindingly irritating school of aesthetically neutered and ideologically castrated middle-class, too-thick-for-art-school Blair Rock. A punter, seeing a hack scribble furiously, approaches and demands that NME doesn't compare Belle & Sebastian to "Felt, Nick Cave, The Smiths..." and a whole load of shit anti--rock bands because "that would be lazy". OK, how about The Carpenters without the camp? Burt Bacharach without the balls? Jonathan Richman without th jokes? Crowded House without the incisive lyrical insights? Or maybe The Velvet Underground without the tunes, looks, attitude, politics, style, asthetics, vision, talent, charisma, sunglasses, black turtle-neck sweaters or f-ing drugs? That do you? I mean, you seem so easily pleased. Steven Wells (andy clutches his handbag in front of him and goes "oooooooo-ooooooooooooo") ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------