Thirty years after ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ arrived, Belle and Sebastian are at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre celebrating the album that turned them into one of indie pop’s most loved bands. Three decades is a long time for any record to hang around, but these songs have aged remarkably well, still finding new listeners while carrying plenty of history for the people who have been with the band for years.
Belle and Sebastian formed in Glasgow in 1996 around Stuart Murdoch, arriving just as Britpop was reaching peak swagger. While plenty of British bands were going bigger, louder and brasher, Belle and Sebastian headed in almost the opposite direction. Murdoch wrote about awkward people, complicated relationships, loneliness, sex and everyday life, while the band wrapped those stories in warm melodies and arrangements that often looked back to 1960s pop and folk.
Their second album, ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, arrived in the same year they formed and became the record that really defined them. Songs including ‘Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying’, ‘Seeing Other People’ and ‘Judy and the Dream of Horses’ helped build a devoted following, and the album’s reputation has only grown. Pitchfork recently revisited the record for its 30th anniversary, describing it as a cult-forming album filled with remarkable literary and musical detail.
Belle and Sebastian now have 12 studio albums behind them, and while their sound has moved in different directions over the years, there is still something unmistakably theirs running through it. Murdoch remains at the centre, joined by longtime members Stevie Jackson, Chris Geddes, Richard Colburn and Sarah Martin, alongside Bobby Kildea and Dave McGowan.
Tonight at the Enmore, though, it is impossible not to think about just how much ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ has come to mean. What started as a quietly strange little indie-pop record from Glasgow has become an album people have carried with them for 30 years. Belle and Sebastian never needed to shout particularly loudly to get noticed, and all these years later, they still don’t.
The tour moves to Brisbane and Perth next, tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
