Get excited, all you nerdy music types. Fire up those latte machines, dry-clean those turtleneck sweaters and bust out the Kleenex boxes: Pop music is coming to town.
Glasgow septet Belle and Sebastian kick off the American leg of their 39-show spring tour of North America and Europe on Monday with a pair of dates at Boston club Avalon. Canadian collective the New Pornographers opens both nights.
On paper, B&S don't seem like a stellar live band. You would expect that, onstage, the subdued instrumentation and cerebral songwriting so central to the band's creative identity would lack the poignancy and nuance that they achieve on record.
You would further expect the sting of band leader/singer/songwriter/guitarist Stuart Murdoch's tongue-in-cheek irony to be drowned out by his band's myriad instruments which would, expectedly, lose their tenuous, recorded balance, bleeding together into a muddled mess of strings, trumpets and poppy progressions.
This is all very untrue.
A Look Back at "Live at the Barbicon"
Earlier this year, B&S released an iTunes-only recording of their performance in the All Tomorrow's Parties Don't Look Back series called "Live at the Barbican," where they played 1996's sophomore opus "If You're Feeling Sinister" in its entirety. Undoubtedly the band's best album, "Sinister" showcases B&S at their most fragile and Murdoch at his most vivid.
His character sketches are thorough and penetrating, and his vocals are hushed; together, they have the unspoken insightfulness and subtlety of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring."
As a rule in live settings, lyrics are rarely audible beneath the swirling instrumentation (especially when sung in mildly thick Scottish accents), and fine boundaries between different instruments often blur when faced with non-perfect acoustics.
But instead of losing the musical fragility and lyrical complexity of the studio version of "Sinister," "Live at the Barbican" maintains them, and even adds different dimensions that the low-budget recording failed to capture.
Nearly totally loyal to the original, every instrument and every rest, minute vocal shift or other slight technical exercise is captured in the live version. The closing full-band crescendos of opener "The Stars of Track and Field" feel more urgent on "Barbican" than on the original, with Murdoch sounding less like an espresso-sipping bookworm and more like a bipolar, lonely single.
While in the recorded version of "Me and the Major," the harmonicas were added pleasantly to the bed of instrumentation, they were too low in the mix to make a noticeable impact on the song; eventually, they started to sound quaint, and ultimately, goofy.
On the live version, where they are recorded at the same level as the keyboards and guitars, they add energy and serve a critical, lightening function to the song.
The Sleepyheads wake up
If an album as introverted and shy as "Sinister" can make the jump from your headphones-while-lying-on-the-floor-of-your-bedroom to a brightly lit stage with so little lost in transit, then "The Life Pursuit," B&S's 2006 release and the album for which they are touring, should fare even better.
The group's sixth full-length album is as sardonic and refined as its predecessors, but "Pursuit" also features perhaps the most upbeat, up-tempo, and downright danceable work B&S have done yet.
The purring trumpet, whispering guitars and brushed drums of "Dress Up in You" sound like they were pulled right off of "Sinister," as do the tinkling piano of "Mornington Crescent" and the painstakingly detailed lyrics of "The Blues are Still Blue."
The melancholy side of indie-pop and storytelling that Belle and Sebastian have made a career of depicting shows up regularly on "Pursuit," but they finally take time to explore the sunny, twee and even rollicking sides as well. The results are delightful.
On "Song for Sunshine," Murdoch's voice has a fuller, more confident timbre, and with its funky keyboards, pulsing bass lines and high-hat fills, the B&S rhythm section sounds like George Clinton's Parliament. Its chirping vocal harmonies and effected guitar solo give standout track "We Are the Sleepyheads" a swinging '60s pop kind of sound, something that fans of "Sinister"'s velvety glumness never thought the band capable of.
Producer Tony Hoffer, known for his work with Beck and Air, pushes Murdoch and friends to branch out, and they respond by speeding up their time signatures, testing other genres, and turning their frowns upside-down(s).
The mega-tour, which features stops in Canada as well as Germany, Sweden, Italy and Norway, is bisected by a stop at the 20th South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas. B&S have a headlining show of sorts at the four-day, 1300-plus band festival/industry shindig, where they will be featured in a showcase of other bands from the Matador recording label.
One of these bands is Vancouver's New Pornographers, who must have won the horsengoggle at the Matador offices, because in addition to sharing the stage with B&S at SXSW, they will also be opening for them for the North American leg of the tour, including both nights at The Avalon.
I can't define Canadian power-pop, but I know it when I see it
It's hard to think of a band with a bigger penchant for penning catchy tunes than this Canadian power-pop supergroup, which features the vocals of alt-country maiden Neko Case, the assorted talents of Destroyer's Dan Bejar, and other Canadian musicians who initially formed the New Pornographers with little intent to record multiple records.
At the helm is troubadour A. Carl Newman, who, in addition to being the lead vocalist, plays guitar, synthesizer, harmonica, pump organ, xylophone, and something called an ebow, which may or may not actually exist.
Formed in 1997, the group quickly recorded and released the single "Letter from an Occupant" to warm critical response, which lauded Newman's pop sensibility, Case's traditional, twangy country vocals, and the group's gleeful exuberance.
But it was not until three years later that the New Pornographers would follow up in earnest on their early indications. In 2000, Mint Records released "Mass Romantic," a clinic on how to write a pop song.
Culling from Americana, new-wave and Britpop, "Mass Romantic" showcases Newman-and-friend's seemingly endless repertoire of musical tricks and influences, ranging from Brian Wilson to American supergroup The Minus Five.
Originally formed as a one-and-done band, the success and accolades of "Mass Romantic" led the New Pornos to reconsider, ultimately sending them back into the studio for round two.
In 2003, Matador Records released the New Pornos' second full-length, "Electric Version," which picks up where "Mass Romantic" left off, with a sturdier, more permanent sound. Whereas "Mass Romantic" sounds at times like a quilt of assorted influences and musicians, "Electric Version" depicts a fully gelled band with a long-term artistic vision.
Songs like the anthemic "Chump Change," the nostalgic "From Blown Speakers," and the instant classic "The Laws Have Changed" rank among that year's best and made "Electric Version" one of 2003's most fully realized albums.
In 2004, Newman released a solo album, "The Slow Wonder," also on Matador, and though chock-full of power-pop gems, it lacked the full force and creative pep that his Pornographer bandmates lent the group albums. 2006's "Twin Cinema," the third Pornos full-length, did not.
Even more cohesive than "Electric Version," "Cinema" is yet another offering of old-fashioned, noticeably-influenced pop music, full of approachable ballads, hummable melodies, and mature lyricism.
Aside from sharing a label, Belle and Sebastian and the New Pornographers have in common an affinity for stirring, melodic, seemingly conservative pop music of all kinds, and under the direction of their respective musical masterminds, an ability to blend their influences into a poppy mix that is all their own.
By no means is it the kind of music that will make you want to jump and dance. It's not the kind of music that you put on at a party. It's not really music that you have fun to, but that doesn't mean that it's not the kind of music that you don't want to see live.
Musicians as talented as these simply need to be seen, and, booty-shaking or not, songs as good as these simply need to be heard.
