Belle and Sebastian, SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Catriona Stewart
Three stars
"It's a dream come true," says Stuart Murdoch, like he means it. I'm quite sure he does.
"It" is a stadium gig at The Hydro, a spaceship-shaped thousands-seater that has reverberated to Mick Fleetwood's drums and withstood the gyrations of Beyonce's hips.
Where does Belle and Sebastian fit in to this? Well, with the Scottish Festival Orchestra behind them and some dancing girls afore. Some strobe lights, some hypnotic video footage and a shower of big balloons fill the vast cavern.
It all helps, these bows and whistles, and the crowd seems taken with the novelty of it - this doggedly loved band, 19 years of hipstery twee, rocking it out on the big stadium stage.
The set starts slow and a little tepid until The Party Line vamps things up. It could be accused of sounding a little like karaoke emanating from the Horseshoe Bar on a Friday after 5pm but at least it was fun.
In the opening numbers the orchestra does not suffer overwork, poised but underused for the majority of tracks. Occasionally there is a whiff of brass and the glisten of strings but they add very little to the set overall. There are Belles and Sebastians plenty enough to have made this gig on their own.
Murdoch, a coiled spring, seems moved to make the most of the space around him, shaking and ducking and jiggy, jabby dancing like Amir Khan.
He enters the crowd, he invites fans up to dance, he's the perfect host. He fires t-shirt guns. "They wouldn't let us have jet packs but they let us have t-shirt guns." There's a metaphor there for managing ambition.
It takes until The Boy With the Arab Strap, tucked towards the very end, before things truly come alive. By then it has been a night for the fans, not newcomers, not anyone unaccustomed to the off-tune charm of this band, who remain best in smoky, intimate venues.
It's hard not to let your mind wander, in the dark and strobe lights, all the while aware of a beautiful pink and gold late spring, early summer evening dwindling away outside.
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