Sinister: Manchester review

[Hopkins T]

This is my review of the Sunday night Manchester gigs, which will be
published in the SU newspaper here later this week. It's a little old and
stale now but I thought you might like to see it.



> Belle and Sebastian, Manchester Town Hall, 28/12/97 
> 
> "Take a second of the day and think of all the things which we have done
> this year..." 
> 
> I know you've heard twice as many end-of-year summaries than a sane person
> could reasonably stomach by now, but this was, simply, the coolest thing.
> Belle and Sebastian, the pop group whose music has wrapped itself around
> my year like fine bacon around a Christmas sausage, winding up 1997 with a
> Classic Pop Event. 
> Among the many and various reasons I love Belle and Sebastian is the fact
> that they are scrupulous in their insistence on doing things differently.
> They seem to be able to exist effortlessly outside the tedious
> restrictions of established pop method, to be completely different to
> their crass contemporaries. 
> So there are three concerts in two days, including a matinee performance.
> The gigs are held in the Victorian gothic splendour of Manchester Town
> Hall (the most unusual venue I've seen since Belle and Sebastian played in
> an octagonal church in London this summer...). The stage, bizarrely, is
> C-shaped, meaning that at no point could any individual see the whole
> band, who swapped places for each song. And I had no chance of inspecting
> keyboard player Wee Chris's reported penchant for outrageous flared loons.
> Most unusual of all, this is no slick pop spectacular. There are gaps
> between the songs as a result of the stage layout or technical problems,
> (one very lengthy one was due to some unspecified cello catastrophe),
> filled with embarrassed comments or ad-hoc songs. Stevie demonstrated how
> the guitar figure in the classic 'La Pastie De La Bourgeoisie' bore a
> shocking resemblance to the theme from 'Emmerdale', and treated us to a
> special rendition of Manchester's most famous contribution to pop history:
> 'Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs'. Some of the above
> displeased some of the capacity crowd, unhappy that the unwritten rules of
> rock and roll were being so blatantly flouted.  
> I loved it. 
> I love them for the fact they don't feel the need to put on a bland
> standard show. I love them for the fact that they put themselves in
> unusual and difficult situations, as much to see what happens as anything.
> I love them because they seem to be standing alone in consistently taking
> chances in a way that none of the nominees for Brat awards could ever
> understand. 
> And I love them because, as someone wise once said, they sound fucking
> brilliant. Song after beautiful song, they reminded me why I adore their
> records and made me all excited because the new songs sounded fresher,
> more exciting, better still. Belle and Sebastian  have a new LP out in the
> springtime. If songs like 'Seymour Stein' and 'Loneliness Of The Middle
> Distance Runner' are anything to go by, it's going to be fantastic.
> Really. No pop band of the moment has such a fine grasp of pop perfection,
> even down to the immaculate choice of cover versions. 'Reel Around The
> Fountain' in March, this time 'In A Nutshell' the best song from the first
> Orange Juice LP, a copper bottomed classic rendered, if anything, more
> beautiful, shimmering and fragile than the original. 
> Of course, a professional journalist would be compelled to tell you of
> weak points and faults (indeed, one well-known and far-too-old inky scribe
> was reported to be ostentatiously parading his contempt for the band
> during the matinee). I could, and can, see none. For the first time in
> ages, I am too far gone, head over heels to have any kind of rational
> perspective. Isn't that great?  
> Ordinarily, I would be warning you to catch up with Belle And Sebastian
> before it is too late. True to form, they confound the ordinary. They seem
> to be continuing upwards and onwards, each new song a new way to wring
> emotional reactions from me and god knows how many others in a rainy
> Manchester. 
> A fantastic night. Lots of good friends and me, all together for the
> pleasure of seeing the best pop group in the whole world. And the pleasure
> of dreaming of the new LP, as good a reason for looking forward to 1998 as
> any.  
> 
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