Belle and Sebastian
The Fox Theater
1807 Telegraph Ave.
Oakland
May 16, 2024
In the world of Scottish indie pop, Belle and Sebastian surely must be the hardest working band in the business. Having put out albums pretty steadily ever since they started releasing devastatingly lovely twee albums in the early ’90s, the band has kept up their output through the present day. They released their 12th studio album, Late Developers, early last year, and as a diehard music lover who some might truly call “fanatical,” I almost can’t remember a year I haven’t seen them live in different parts of the world, in the thirty years they’ve been around — barring pandemics, of course. In 2024, just like last year, the band and its faithful fans reconvened for some fun and frolicking onstage at Oakland’s Fox Theater.
And what the fans really wanted, of course, was exactly what they got.
Lead singer Stuart Murdoch’s quiet, softly spoken vocals, laden with clever entendres, are sometimes pensive, sometimes full-bodied soundscapes tricked out with melodies and hooks, a Garden of Eden of pop. Genial and chatty onstage, Murdoch (who loves riding buses and bikes) told the crowd how much he loves the Bay Area, having lived briefly in San Francisco before forming the band. He took a short break between songs to read an excerpt from his debut novel, released last year, in which two friends take BART while musing on life. He also mentioned that he lucked into a last-minute acupuncture appointment earlier that day in Oakland, for a class of acupuncture students. Murdoch, still nimble in middle age, said it was amazing.
“So, Oakland saved my life,” he concluded.
There are a few things Belle and Sebastian are known for in live shows. One, thank god, is always playing plenty of their hits (as far as indie fandom goes); fans shouted out plenty of requests during their set, and they did honor one request to play a classic nugget, 1997’s somber, string-laden “Lazy Line Painter Jane,” during their encore. Murdoch’s earlier songs were pop-embellished pleas to see the world beyond his workaday life in his hometown of Glasgow. “Working the village shop/ Putting a poster up/ Dreaming of anything/ Dreaming of the time when you’re free,” he croons in “Lazy Line Painter Jane.” There’s always string arrangements, a cellist, a trumpet, a saxophone, to fill out the sonic landscape.
It’s so twee it hurts. But if you love proper indie pop, it hurts so good. And Murdoch, a devout Catholic, loves a clever turn of phrase. On “The State That I Am In,” he spins a fantastical yarn about family hijinks and giving into “whiskey and gin” devoting his life to God: “There was a pregnant pause before He said okay.”
Another tradition, squashed last year after Covid concerns but brought back this time around, is inviting a clutch of fans onstage to dance during their biggest hit, “The Boy with the Arab Strap.” It’s a lush pop anthem with a telltale keyboard that crescendos into a sardonic singalong of barren, forlorn souls and resentful indie cool kids, colored with “the chaos of trouble.” An Arab strap refers to a cock ring, though Murdoch insisted in an interview that he naively didn’t know this when he wrote the song. When he disses lover’s rival, singing, “We all know you are soft ’cause we’ve all seen you dancing/ We all know you’re hard ’cause we all saw you drinking from noon/ Until noon again,” his lyrics wry and spray lyrics take a backseat to the catchy beat.
For this and often another song or two, suddenly the stage becomes the dancefloor, and the fans become the band. I’ve experienced this a few times in my lifelong fandom with the band. It never fails to be uplifting, exuberant, and sneaky-cool, looking out with the band at the throngs of people I was standing among just moments ago, now looking at us, as we dance to perfect pop in perfect joy.
My friend Ayako expressed an interest in finally getting onstage to dance this year. So I helped her make it happen, and primed her for the right time to rush to the stage as I snapped photos from the crowd. After the show, her phone started to blow up — more friends were sending her photos of her dancing on stage next to Stuart and the band. It was a pop dance party for the proletariat: A stage for the fans, and music for the masses.
