Daniel Kitson

Belle and Sebastian and the Difference Between Good and Great More

Live Review

Written By Michael Wood Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Daniel Kitson & Gavin Osbourne supporting Belle and Sebastian with The London Contemporary Orchestra at Apollo, Manchester

There were good gigs - gigs that inspire you, that make you want to pick up a guitar or write a song, that make you want to create or do - and then there was Belle and Sebastian on a December Tuesday night in Manchester.

The stage is beset with instruments - there is the forty plus piece London Contemporary Orchestra on stage - but it is the gentle strum of If You're Feeling Sinister softly controlled through Stevie Jackson's pedal that starts off the evening. The floating Stuart Murdoch vocal drifts high around the auditorium.

No, that was not the start.

Daniel Kitson with support from Gavin Osbourne on the guitar lyrically telling a story over forty minutes which detailed parallel lives split over decades. To tell more would be to ruin something which has to be experience first hand but needless to say there was a tone set and a crafting with set the evening perfectly.

And forward to Belle and Sebastian who dance from their vintage work to new material with a glee. Write About Love and I'm Not Living in the Real World flourish with the bigger arrangements and meaning and significant is lashed on them layer upon layer. It is in the confessional ode to Isobel that is I'm Waking Up to Us that the tip over occurs from good to great.

And so it is in Lord Anthony that one could be excused a tear forming at the eye - a new meaning emerges in my mind about a more modern Anthony, the mark of a good gig - and it is possible that Murdoch is having as much fun as the assembled and seated audience and perhaps that is what the night captures. An artist as happy with his back catalogue as his current work and proud of both. At one point someone calls for a song and Murdoch replies that he cannot play that. "People would slit their wrists."

One recalls the reputation of the band as being hit and miss, hot and cold and contrasts it with the delight that the band seem to be as captured in as the audience. The Fox In The Snow is dreamy, lilted and sounds as if it was constructed delicately from the snow which covered the roads around the venue. I Fought in a War comes after with strings sliding behind its vocal and the swell of emotion and mood drill sit into the heart.

Dirty Dream Number Two is followed by a rapture when The Boy with the Arab Strap starts and people are welcomed to the stage to dance connecting the ebullience of audience to band. They are given medals, but in the end we take something more precious home with us.

The set is a mixture of the old and new but is lavished with attention, meaning and detail. The London Contemporary Orchestra augment, never overpowering. The emotion rises and maintains a level but never drifts to melodrama.

There is an encore that makes for an hour forty five on stage and for the final tune Me and the Major the entire Orchestra come forward to dance joyfully.

There were good gigs - gigs that inspire you, that make you want to pick up a guitar or write a song, that make you want to create or do - and then is a gig that just makes you glad you were alive.