It was a night for Belle & Sebastian deep cuts excepting the opening track, “Enter Sylvia Plath.” A disco ode to the doomed poetess may be portent of what to expect on the Glaswegian quintet’s ninth full-length, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, coming in January.
The veteran outfit’s most recent album, 2010’s Write About Love, preceded this year’s re-release of a catalog brimming with brightly mopey indie pop. As such, frontman Stuart Murdoch and company played to the completists, reaching all the way back to 1996 to tease out songs from If You’re Feeling Sinister, including “The Fox in the Snow” and the title track.
“The Wrong Girl” repped Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, while “We Are the Sleepyheads” stood in for The Life Pursuit. In fact, the group touched on nearly every long-player in its discography. That’s an impressive feat given they only had an hour.
The band seemed cohesive and content if a bit docile until the final three songs, when, before launching into “The Boy With the Arab Strap,” Murdoch declared a dance party and began plucking audience members out of the mass. The lucky handful bopped and bobbed alongside the Barton Hills Elementary Choir as they filed onstage.
The two dozen kids breathed new life into the nearly 20-year-old tunes with hand jives and youthful exuberance. Belle & Sebastian wrapped the set with “Me and the Major,” two minutes over time. They left ’em wanting more.
This article appears in October 10 • 2014.