Tuesday 31/05/11 Belle & Sebastian @ The Roundhouse, London

Bands often provide their supporters with something of an emotional crutch, a half imagined shoulder to cry on. Belle &Sebastian, with their habit of publishing fan mail (and their responses) as part of their album sleeves have long been one of the few bands to develop this tendency into a full blown agony aunt operation.

As front man Stuart stands, unassuming and camp as ever at the front of the stage, he’s bombarded by screams. Some scream out songs requests, some share their darkest secrets. “Did you get my email?” cries one desperate soul.
“Oh I did, yeah, but don’t worry, the only reason I never wrote back is that I knew we’d get a chance to chat tonight…”
It’s the type of disarming, gentle wit that makes him such a great lyricist, but underneath the humour lies a genuine will to connect with fans that bands rarely hold on to having reached the cult status that Belle and Sebastian have.

During ‘Lord Anthony’ for instance, a song detailing the torturous school life of a cross dressing toff, Stuart comes down into the audience and allows a fan to apply mascara to him (a reference to the songs lyrics) whilst, with unnerving stoicism for someone so supposedly wimpy, he continues to sing, note perfect.

Later on he invites four audience members, who, coincidentally, look as if they really were bullied at school (probably by the same judgemental sods that become reviewers) to dance on stage. They boogie their way through crowd favourite, ‘The Boy with the Arab Strap’ before being honoured in a medal ceremony. Twee? Belle and Sebastian? Pull the other one and see if the orthopaedic shoe comes off…

The set itself is perfectly balanced between new material and old classics. Anyone worried that the set’s opener, ‘I Didn’t See it Coming’, might indicate a night of songs from the slightly limp new album, ‘Write about Love’, is soon appeased by tunes such as ‘Another Sunny Day’ and ‘Step into my Office, Baby.’
The band revisit their pre Rough Trade years almost as frequently. Fans who apply the logic that the older the song, the better it is, are overjoyed to hear the band run through the title track of their first ever release, ‘Dog on Wheels’.
Their first two albums contribute only one song each to the set, but both are remarkable highlights. The first, ‘We Rule the School’ from debut album ‘Tigermilk’ brings a reverent hush to The Roundhouse.
Plato, as was his want, theorised that there was a ‘realm of perfect forms’ where everything is as it should be, as you would imagine it if you had the capacity. ‘We Rule the School’ belongs to the realm of perfect songs, songs that encapsulate a feeling so well they become it’s only true definition, songs like ‘This Must be the Place’ and ‘Stretch Out and Wait.’

By contrast ‘Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying’ sets the crowd off in raptures, singing out the lyrics, word for word, with an unfaltering and precise passion, as if each were auto-cued by the tattoos of the neck in front, though it’s not that type of crowd and they’re not those types of lyrics.

They’re the type that remain tipexed on a rucksack in a forgotten locker and emblazoned on the mind, well after the claustrophobia of corridors and the hormonal/ halcyon days of school have passed. Belle and Sebastian are a group fully deserving of the devotion they inspire and their performance, though bolstered by a string section and executed in a cavernous space, retains the intimacy they became renowned for back when they were playing in libraries.