Fulfilling a long-held wish is so damn satisfying. Back in April, on a warm spring day, I finally got to see a full length Belle and Sebastian gig (as opposed to the short festival set I saw last year at Zurich OpenAir). No matter that Belle and Sebastian have been around for years now, and none of us (band or fans) are young hipsters anymore (or perhaps ever were) – I still adore them.
But first, I had to suffer through support band Schwervon! (their exclamation, not mine). Sorry, but not my cup of tea. Shrill lo-fi anecdotal ramblings, irritating rather than quirky.
But all traces of vexation quickly dissipate when Stuart Murdoch and his band of merry men and women take the stage. Gentle, melodic and at times bouncy indie pop, so saturated with nostalgia for me that I can barely stand it. God, the 90`s!
The set begins with 1996`s ‘The State I Am In’, and then breezes through ‘Dirty Dream Number Two’, ‘Write About Love’, ‘I’m Not Living In The Real World’, ‘Sukie In The Graveyard’, and the beautiful, tender ‘Piazza, New York Catcher’, before ‘Lord Anthony‘, complete with make-up session:
Aww, Stuart and his penchant for make-up. Like last year, he gets a few girls up on stage for a danceathon during ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap‘, and very charmingly can’t seem to bring himself to sing ‘…your ten biggest wanks…’ because of the ladies present. Such lovely manners. At the end they are awarded with gold medals for their enthusiastic participation. Stuart is quite the chatty chap, telling us how he has been riding around Zurich all day on the trams, of which there are so many, and all for free! – well, at least he didn’t pay anything (let’s hope there isn’t a ZVV rep in the audience)…
The evening ends on an encore of ‘The Blues Are Still Blue’ and finally, a memorable ‘Judy And The Dream Of Horses‘, which is so jaunty, carefree and all-out poppy that I float out of X-Tra on wave of happy delirium, the perfect note on which to end the evening.
One of the highlights of 2010 for me was seeing Belle and Sebastian play at Zurich Open Air in August. How many years had I waited for just such an opportunity? More than you can count on both hands, and perhaps a few toes, too. Suffice to say, having another opportunity to see them here in Zurich next week (13.04.11) when they play at X-Tra makes me a very, very happy camper.
Belle and Sebastian emerged from the Glaswegian indie scene in the mid-90s on influential label Jeepster (label mates included Snow Patrol, Looper and The Gentle Waves), and immediately struck a chord with middle-class indie kids everywhere with their gentle, memorable odes to cups of tea, herbaceous borders, British fauna and books. I still adore my early Belle and Sebastian EPs (collected in the 2005 Jeepster release, Push Barman To Open Old Wounds), and have given each and every one of their albums the extended, super high rotation treatment over the years. No-one does unbearably catchy and uplifting indie pop songs quite like Belle and Sebastian.
Out and about at the unbearably anti-social hour of 11 am on a Sunday morning, early enough to catch most of Friska Viljor’s jaunty set. Oh, what a happy bunch these Swedish rockers are! Smiles are infectious, you know, so the early birds that had gathered wore big, mostly hungover grins along with their mud-caked boots. Exuberant and merry, Daniel Johansson and Joakim Sveningsson sauntered good-naturedly along throughout their set of happy, country-and sea shanty- inspired rock.
Yeah, that mud….resembling the consistency of clay, with a heaping dose of stinky fertiliser -*phew*. But at least we weren’t floating anymore.
Swiss band Christopher Christopher were startlingly young, fresh and poppy, so clean cut and neat after Friska Viljor’s grungy (in a good way) vibe. I have to admit that as much as I enjoyed Friska Viljor, I was ready for an indie pop injection after a rock-heavy programme (I have filled in many gaps in my knowledge of Swedish rockers). They were welcomed to the stage like the proverbial prodigal sons, and played with aplomb to an (almost – they hail from Baden) home crowd. Beatles comparisons aside – could be the melodies, or the haircuts – I think the boys have a bright future ahead of them with their sweetly naive songs of young love, narcissism, and Nimbin. I had the chance to sit down with Olivier and Matthias for a chat after their set – stay tuned for that later.
MORE Swedish rock from Johnossi (can there have been any bands left to play in Sweden the weekend of the 27-29th August?), and then Swedish folk/pop from the gorgeous JJ. I missed most of JJ’s set but I loved her sweet and ethereal songs – will have to catch her again sometime.
Jonsi fans in feathers, applique and tassles populated the Main Stage area. The ex-Sigur Ros singer proceeded to enchant all present with his ear-defying falsetto and fragile melodies. I’ve got no idea what he was singing about but he was amazing. Bassist úlfur Hannson played with a cast on his hand after severing a ligament after their recent Helsinki show (ouch), and Jonsi’s boyfriend Alex Somers played guitar, keyboards and other assorted sound effects. Towards the end he went off stage and shyly came back wearing a huge feathered head-dress, to huge applause. There was a lot of freaky bird imagery and themes happening on that stage.
Finally, the stage was prepped for Belle and Sebastian. Dear readers, by then I was fading fast and dreaming of somewhere, anywhere warm, dry, mudless and silent. I just don’t have the stamina anymore (if I ever had it). Needless to say, once Stuart Murdoch and company appeared I forgot all my woes and focused on the event in front of me. I’ve been waiting for years to see Belle and Sebastian and I was going to enjoy every second of it, godammit!
And so I did. Sometime in the last few years Stuart Murdoch has gotten buff. I mean, like muscles bulging buff. He used to be so fey and skinny, but now he is the picture of rude health. And he’s got a rather wicked sense of humour, as evinced by his comments regarding the VIPs standing high and dry in the VIP tent just over yonder: ‘…look at those fuckers over in the VIP tent – come over here and get dirty with the rest of us!‘.
He also took a moment to invite some audience members on stage for a spot of dancing, wherein a bunch of fame-hungry fans leapt and wrestled their way to the front in an effort to have their 15 seconds of fame. They invaded the stage were brought out on stage for ‘The boy with the arab strap‘ (ah, that song, so many memories) to dance fleetingly (but crazily) with Stuart (he had to go and play piano) and each other. At one point one of the girls took out a bottle of fluorescent pink nailpolish (as you do) and painted Stuart’s nails – I can say for certain it’s the only time I’ve ever seen an on-stage manicure. At the end they all hugged Stuart and bounced off, starstruck, while Stuart was left to ponder the effects on the Swiss mountain air on the girls: ‘Those girls are so strong, they could rip a man’s arm off…must be all that mountain air...’.
All too soon it was over, but I felt ridiculously happy. Their happy twee indie pop, their good humour, the sun shining, bubbles being blown by the audience in the afternoon sunshine, on-stage manicures, grown men reduced to the skinny undergraduates of yesteryear – it was great. They didn’t play anywhere near all the songs on my dream wishlist (you can see the setlist here), but it didn’t really matter. They have such an amazing back catalogue that they could play all day and never play all my favourites.
I couldn’t bear to see anything else after Belle and Sebastian. I had planned to see Kitty, Daisy and Lewis but B&S ran late and once they finished I didn’t want to sully my memory of that perfect gig with anything else. It was really the best way to end the festival. So I gathered up my gear, and squelched back to the tram, then my car, then home. I drove home, tired, dirty and with ears ringing, but with a huge, huge grin on my face.
Now to wait for next year….let’s see what the brave souls over at Zurich OpenAir come up with next. The inaugural year is going to be a hard one to beat, that’s for sure.
If you weren’t standing next to me in the front row, take a look at what you missed out on:
‘I’m a cuckoo’ - Stuart gets all about the stage, does some fancy footwork, and a cute little Beatle-esque side wiggle:
‘Sleep the clock around’:
New song ‘I’m not living in the real world’ from the upcoming album (Belle and Sebastian Write About Love), plus extra yodelling:
Video highlights of the festival from via Seb76zrh:
September 13 is shaping up to be a busy day for album releases, as all of the following have album releases on that auspicious day -
Interpol release Interpol. Now there is an original name for the album! It’s getting mixed reviews from either side of the spectrum (‘amazing!’, ‘total crap, why did you bother?’). Check it out yourself.
Ex-Placebo drummer Steve Hewitt‘s new band Love Amongst Ruin release their highly-anticipated debut effort on this day as well. See and hear the first single ‘So sad (fade)’here. Random observation: I really, really love the artwork for LAR, particularly the beautiful font (I’m a sucker for typography).
Nick Cave’s latest incarnation, Grinderman. The first single ‘Heathen Child’ from the album, Grinderman 2, is out now.
And later on 25th September: Belle and Sebastian release Belle and Sebastian Write About Love. Listen / download (for the first 20 000) to the new song here. Tracklisting as follows: I Didn’t See It Coming / Come On Sister / Calculating Bimbo / I Want The World To Stop / Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John / Write About Love / I’m Not Living In The Real World / Ghost of Rockschool / Read The Blessed Pages / I Can See Your Future/ Sunday’s Pretty Icons
Belle and Sebastian have released the REAL album cover of their latest album (a false one was released last week), Belle and Sebastian Write About Love, due for release 11/12 October 2010. Head on over to their website for a snippet of one of the songs from BASWAL (hehe, that’s quite a good acronym), ‘I Want The World To Stop’. It sounds lovely, very B&S, and the video is suitably vintage, so all the usual boxes have been ticked so far. After a four-year break from touring, Belle and Sebastian are playing quite a few gigs this year throughout Europe, the USA, Canada and South America. See the full list here.
If you haven’t already, check out the latest Grinderman video, ‘Heathen Child’. Freaky, but awesome! Watch Nick Cave get all Clash-of-the-Titans, with laser beam eyes and a rather fetching Roman leather get-up to boot. Keep an eye out for bad dental hygiene, someone’s bottom, that ultimate-destroyer guy from the Hot Chip video, weird hairy bath creepers, and sundry supernatural/mythical creatures.
Gasp! For approximately 10 seconds it seemed as if the Guns’n'Roses headline gig at the Reading & Leeds Festival was in jeopardy when Axl Rose’s official Twitter account suddenly announced that all upcoming shows were cancelled. However, it was soon proven to be naught but a case of Twitter hacking (no doubt by some teenage hacker desperate to stop the flood of GNR covers that have begun to surface). Eagle-eyed fans noticed the tweet used the British spelling of ‘cancelled’ and thus accurately surmised that Axl would NEVER be caught dead using The Queen’s English. So sleep well tonight, people, safe in the knowledge that GNR are still out there somewhere, together, in Paradise City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty….
I’ve been waiting for this one – the video for ‘Madder Red’, the latest single from Yeasayer’s Odd Blood. Starring Kristin Bell and an, ahem, unusual pet:
Download ‘Point Me At Lost Islands‘ here – but be quick about it as the free download is only offered for one day! I like what I’m hearing, very much.
You can listen to samples of each track on their Youtube page.
Very organised, this new supergroup, with all the relevant social media boxes ticked – twitter, facebook, youtube, free download, myspace etc etc – I guess that is obligatory these days, isn’t it?
