Belle And Sebastian @ Enmore Theatre

You’re a critically revered band with a number of early classics, entering your 20th year of existence while still being culturally relevant. What type of set do you play? If you’re Belle and Sebastian, you play a set that tries to make every type of fan happy, even if that means the great new album you’re ostensibly there to promote gets given short shrift.

Twerps opened the show, playing endearing jangle pop that matched up perfectly with B&S. Still within weeks of the release of their solid album Range Anxiety, it was a great opportunity for the band to pick up some new fans. And while Martin Frawley’s vocals are even more grating live than they are in studio, they received a well-deserved warm reception.

Belle and Sebastian then appeared onstage, all 14 of them. An impressive sight that included a string quartet, it grew more impressive as you watched everyone else onstage change instruments so often you lost count of how many were actually played.

They only performed four songs from the new album, which was a disappointment. But they had too many amazing songs to get through. Almost all of the band’s eras were accounted for, which didn’t allow for much set momentum but seemed the best approach to appease the diverse crowd gathered. Looking around, the varied style and age of the audience spoke of Belle and Sebastian’s far-reaching appeal.

That appeal has its own setbacks, however. Before launching into the great ‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’, a video encouraged the crowd to get onstage and dance with the band. When the song started, no-one got up, leading to an awkward, long loop of the intro until frontman Stuart Murdoch had to get up from his piano and single out people in the crowd. Which then encouraged more people to do so, and the obligatory public nudity followed.

But that initial reluctance from the crowd to get onstage was confusing. Perhaps it was because the average age of a 20-year-old band’s fans would be something close to 30, and when you’re 30 you’re no longer interested in climbing over two barriers just to dance onstage, even if that means the band dies on the vine while asking you up there.

Still, there was one thing that everyone in the crowd was equally excited for, and that was If You’re Feeling Sinister. Four songs were played with gusto from the album, all instantly recognised by the audience. It’s a masterpiece for the ages, and the band now knows that the key to a successful show is to pay the album proper attention and everyone will leave happy, which is exactly what happened. The definition of crowd-pleasing.