Who needs muscle when you’ve got twee folk and ersatz blues?

No guitar bruisers, but still a class act

REVIEW: BELLE AND SEBASTIAN
Hammersmith Apollo by RICHARD OSLEY

TEN years since starting out as a college music project, Belle and Sebastian look like they could go on forever.
They have never been a band for the macho guitar bruisers, after all they were named after a sappy French cartoon about a boy’s curious affection for a giant white dog (remember that stupid programme: it was on after Why Don’t You? in the summer holidays, I switched off and did something less boring instead).
But who needs muscle and bravado when you can serve up a class act like this. Their set at the Apollo is a carefully-crafted builder, sprouting from achingly twee folk and ersatz blues into a whistling barrage of brass and guitars with the occasional Beach Boy echo.
Largely, this show and tour is to promote fifth album The Life Pursuit, highlighted so far by the bouncy top 20 single Funny Little Frog. While the rest of the tracks are unfamiliar, they are not lacking in style. Look out for the bubbling magic of The Blues Are Still Blue and Another Sunny Day, two sleeping giants for the future. It’s not all new stuff, though. While big hits like Legal Man and The Boy With The Arab Strap are left on the sidelines, smart old material such as I’m A Cuckoo and Stars Of Track And Field is happily revived. It still sounds good.
There are times when you wonder whether Belle and Sebastian’s music is too twinkly for a venue of this size, the stage is set a way back from the first public railings. At one point the sell-out crowd are encouraged to whistle a refrain from a past album together – but those at the front can’t see those at the back and the intended intimacy is lost. In a smaller setting, the effect of this set piece would have been tremendous.
It’s a minor quibble and nobody left the dancefloor grumbling.