Belle & Sebastian

Belle & Sebastian return to Paris after a couple of years' absence. In the life of a band that's been around for almost a decade, two years can be a short time. Or an eternity. In this case, it's clearly the latter: there are plenty of fans sporting the band's pins and t-shirts, the Grand Rex is packed, and, quite unusually for this venue, the crowd is pressing right up against the stage instead of staying comfortably seated. The main reason these two years feel like such a colossal gap, though, isn't so much the long wait for one of the more widely-loved cult bands around. It's rather that Belle & Sebastian have changed profoundly since then. Their music has changed: the latest album is the first real disappointment after so many gems across albums, EPs and a DVD (the excellent "Fans Only").

The line-up has changed: the adorable Isobel Campbell, important both in the studio and on stage, has taken her cello, her stage presence and her ideas away in favour of a solo career. The band's attitude on stage has changed too. Truth be told, this last shift wasn't sudden, but a slow process that had already run its course some time ago, as shown by their performance in Rome for the 2002 edition of the "Enzimi" festival. The symbol of this new state of affairs is singer and main songwriter Stuart Murdoch. From the awkward, shy frontman-against-his-will he once was, he has become, if not quite an animal on stage, at least a seasoned entertainer who chats with the audience and no longer seems to be up there against his will: he's witty, he dances, he jumps around, he's a real presence, even if he still always looks dreamy or melancholy. Then again, after almost ten years touring the world, it would be pretty implausible for an unchanged shyness not to reek of pretence... And a band that presented itself as a bunch of willing, perhaps talented, but still green semi-professionals would come across as just as fake. Every member of Belle & Sebastian is, today, a skilled musician, at ease on stage and perfectly in sync with the others. They gel easily, you can hear the experience built up from playing together, just as you can sense an undimmed appetite for having fun.

It's impossible not to credit the band with a maturity that, on record, can come across as staidness, but on stage manages to add real value both to moments that were already thrilling and to those that, on their latest effort, seem like major missteps. One case in point is "Step Into My Office, Baby", the first single from "Dear Catastrophe Waitress". A song that's hardly thrilling on CD, but great fun live. Credit goes mainly to a bit of "toning down" of what was weakest about it on the album. The backing vocals become thoroughly enjoyable when the instruments drop out halfway through the song, and it's endearing to see Murdoch clearly ill at ease singing the last verse in a languid style, and letting it show. Then he forgets the last words and stops the song, starting to ask the other band members if they remember them. Nobody seems to, but while Murdoch is still muttering away, it's guitarist Stevie Jackson who wraps up the verse and the song with the classic "How can you not remember that?" look on his face. The exchanges between the two are one of the pillars of the show, both the verbal ones, which are hilarious, and the musical ones: it often happens that a song rests mainly on the two of them, when they're not simply performing the song, or part of it, entirely on their own. Jackson himself is by now Belle & Sebastian's second engine, and it's clearly a good thing. With his eccentric moves, his shaky French, and his guitar with a cartoon version of George Harrison drawn on it, he's essential on stage. With his solid technique and his frequent guitar changes, he's, alongside Murdoch, the musical soul of the band.

Naturally, in any case, it's on the older songs that the seven of them really come alive, and the crowd along with them: "Seeing Other People" and "Judy And The Dream Of Horses", from "If You're Feeling Sinister", are hardly among their biggest hits, but they're just as moving as they've always been.

But let's get to the show itself. Franz Ferdinand were expected to open, but health issues forced them to stay home. No great loss. Support duties fall instead to the unknown (even in France) Sébastien Martel: forgettable, if plucky, though one can reasonably doubt that the current darlings of the British music press would have done much better.

Introduced by an arsenal of instruments, four violinists-backing vocalists and a cellist, the band takes the stage. They open with "Passion Fruit", an instrumental with a (spaghetti) western flavour, then it's the turn of "Expectations", which immediately gives Mick Cooke the chance for two trumpet solos. Songs from the latest album follow, then a lively, spirited "Seeing Other People". It's the first song Murdoch performs singing and playing keyboards. He sits down back there humming "She said: I know you and you cannot sing, I said: That's nothing you should hear me play piano"... Not everyone catches the reference, unfortunately.

Stuart sings "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" seated at the table of an imaginary restaurant, while the "catastrophe waitress" of the title (the same girl from the cover of the latest album) goes back and forth serving him, causing nothing but small disasters. The charming pantomime, combined with a bit of cleverness from the band, manages to make you forget the song's rather schmaltzy, easy-listening feel. On the following "Wrapped Up in Books", the frontman sweeps the stage with a broom while Jackson decorates an otherwise unmemorable song with a nice harmonica solo.

The first real thrill comes with "The State I Am In", one of the few songs that even the non-English-speaking crowd sings all the way through. It's impossible to resist the killer chorus, the bitter irony of the lyrics, and a Stuart Murdoch who really seems to be "inside" the song right up to the end, when he finds himself singing alone.

Murdoch talks a lot, and Jackson no less, helped by knowing a bit of French, even if, after a few slip-ups here and there, he'll say the only words of French he really knows are "sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble". Stuart doesn't know French, and declares, with a dreamy look (well, it's his most frequent expression), that the only three or four words he knows he learned from Godard... Violinist-flautist-keyboardist-backing vocalist Sarah Martin, who doesn't even know those few words, sings Gainsbourg with the help of a cheat sheet she keeps glancing at. Her voice is good, but unfortunately it's not Isobel Campbell's, and compared to her she pays the price above all in terms of stage presence. Hers is extremely shy, bordering on genuine fear, while the departed Isobel's was sweet and commanding.

"Scooby Driver", fast as it should be, sung along by almost the whole band, sees a dancing Murdoch happily followed by the crowd, and introduces a small cluster of new songs, among which pops up a "Dog On Wheels" that stays completely faithful to the version on the EP of the same name. Is that a bad thing? No, not when the original is delightful... "Judy And The Dream Of Horses" is simply enchanting.

Even the new songs, in this last part of the show, sound better: "Roy Walker", accompanied by finger snaps throughout, and "If You Find Yourself Caught In Love", perhaps the one closest to their "old" compositions.

Closing out the set, "Sleep The Clock Around" kicks in, and it's yet another ovation. Even more driving than on record, almost pushed along by a joyous breathlessness, this is one of the band's finest songs: naturally, it turns out to be the evening's highest peak, certainly in purely musical terms, but perhaps emotionally too. Mick Cooke's trumpet, as it should, reigns over the crescendo of the finale.

Called back loudly by the crowd, Belle & Sebastian return to the stage for what, judging by the setlist I'll later manage to get my hands on, is the first of two encores. Encores are hardly a habit for the Scottish band, after all. They launch into "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" and the Grand Rex seems to explode. A great choice: not only is it one of their most beloved songs, but it's also fairly easy to play, and therefore to pull off even unplanned. When it wants to, the band can send shivers running beneath the smiles of everyone present. They leave the stage again and come back once more at the crowd's insistence. They play a rousing "You're Just A Baby", from "Tigermilk". Murdoch tells us it's "for the very first time ever", though it's not clear whether he means the song or the second encore...

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