Royal Albert Hall, London
On a tour playing Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister in full on alternate nights, Stuart Murdoch and co wittily reanimate their world of aesthetes and misfits
It’s a double 30th anniversary for Belle and Sebastian, whose first two albums, Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, both came out in 1996. Not that most people heard Tigermilk back then: only 1,000 copies existed until its 1999 reissue. Taken together, though, they were a perfect introduction to frontman Stuart Murdoch’s private universe of aesthetes and misfits (like the girl in Expectations, “making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay”), as instantly inviting as the Smiths’ debut, Wes Anderson’s 90s movies or JD Salinger’s short stories.
The Glaswegians quickly became more diverse and extroverted but it was these two records, performed here in full over two nights, that made them cult worthy. As former bassist Stuart David says in the introductory film, they had a “slightly shambolic magic”.
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