Walking into the Palais Theatre on Saturday night, the auditorium was filled with a thick layer of artificial smoke, which reminded me of my limited forays into indoor smoking (minus the smell). I imagined we were in a Glasgow pub, pre the 2007 smoking ban. I took my seat and watched the rest of the eager crowd roll in. 

It was a wonderfully all ages affair, children & parents, plucky-young-things like myself, well-dressed millennials with angular haircuts, T-shirt rocking Dad’s, and a suitable amount of woodland creature prints and Princess Highway collars. Much of the fashion evoked the twee roots of the band we anticipated. Belle & Sebastian’s music is sweet, sincere and catchy and the audience reflected these values in what instantly felt and eventually became a very communal and bonnie affair. 

The Palais is an odd venue for concerts, in that it is seated, and many attendees are wary of shows that are put on there, often avoiding gigs for their non-egalitarian seating structure and a general awkwardness between those who want to dance, and those who want to be able to see the stage sitting down. It is not a crowd-pleasing space, though its vintage is rather glorious, and generally the view is rather good from all angles. 

Bananagun warmed up and primed the crowd and received some very supportive applause from the audience after their first song. They suited the motley sweetness of the crowd with their Kinks or Monkees-esque psych rock. They seemed chuffed and grateful for the opportunity to open—I actually met their rhythm guitarist at the box office, trying to fob off my received-too-late plus one. I asked a few people near me if they needed a ticket and did one big call out to the plaza before me to no avail. He was getting his friend a ticket on the door. He was cool about it, saying “I’m actually in the support band.” When I asked him if they were buying tickets and wanted one for free. 

Three of Bananagun’s six members wore navy pin-stripe shirts so similar, but all a bit different. I couldn't tell if it was an accident or intentional. A good play for a band toeing the line between nostalgia-act and true psychedelia. The frontman also thanked/named only their drummer, another slightly off-kilter moment which charmed me. 

When the lights went back up and the auditorium began to really fill up, the already friendly atmosphere became even warmer. Then a video clip of cover-star Ciara McLaverty came on, with the album they were to play in full, If You’re Feeling Sinister’s iconic red filter over the top. By the time the all too sweet sound of a Glaswegian-accent poured out, I was grinning ear to ear—and can only assume everyone else was too. She recounted the release of the album in question with the hilarity and precise details only a true friend could provide. This set the perfect tone for the long-standing eight-piece band to finally fill the stage. Call it the band's Best Man speech.

The hilarious and eminently likeable frontman Stuart Murdoch, with the same awesome Glasgow croon, introduced himself to the audience before strumming into the album’s opening track Stars of Track and Field. The audience instantly won-over folded completely and so began a truly cathartic and joyous two hour set. 

By track three, the raucous Me and the Major, lead guitarist Stevie Jackson was ripping it on the Harmonica, busting some positively Austin Powers moves and the aisles were filling with dancers not wishing to disturb the sitters. “Legitimate Love Song” Like Dylan in the Movies and melancholic Fox in the Snow followed. These songs moved me, shockingly, to tears and I was totally absorbed in the pathos of the moment. 

If You’re Feeling Sinister is an album which I hadn’t realised I loved as much as I did and I couldn’t have found myself in a better place to realise that. By Get Me Away from Here and I’m Dying, the entire crowd was on their feet bopping and twisting singing along. Interjections from Murdoch about Victorian Number Plate slogans and questions on Melbourne’s socioeconomics kept the laughs going and encouraged the genuine sense of knowing and earnest familiarity between the band and crowd. 

Album highlight and title track If You’re Feeling Sinister ruminates on religion, connection and solace, speaking totally to the sophistication of Belle & Sebastian as a band. The self-described “maudlin” lyrics of younger-Murdoch were  speaking to me through the music and the gravitational pull I felt towards him, Stevie Jackson and the rest of the band was unlike anything else I have felt at a show in a long time. Their sincerity and a genuine knowing of the albums quality and brevity had me yearning to be invited back to the pub after for a beer and a life lesson. 

It must also be said that the staging was excellent. Colourful lighting with a wonderful disco-ball-effect LED, nostalgic and uber-charming visuals, which varied from animations, a meta projector screen-on-a-screen, early-days footage of the band and short films seemingly made by students. A particularly funny one during the track If You’re Feeling Sinister was of a typically dreamy and handsome young Scot, moving through Glasgow convening and flirting (in the same spots) with multiple different young women, and sometimes all three of them together. There was a consistent smartness to the details of the 30-year-old album which were reminisced on and poked fun at, in a way which speaks to its artistic longevity and treatment by a still-wonderful band.

“Did youse have corporal punishment here?” Murdoch asked into the crowd, a drone of yeses came back. 

“Well, the songs didn’t write themselves!” he declared before playing The Boy Done Wrong Again. 

A set of fan favourites followed the album, including recurring highlight The Boy with the Arab Strap in which a large group of fans join the stage to dance alongside the band, a long-standing tradition at Belle & Sebastian shows. When I found myself running through the aisles hand in hand with a total stranger trying to join in on the fun, nothing could be wrong in that moment. Even though we didn’t make it up, I turned to her and said, “There are actually a lot of people on the stage already.” Not even the fun police could ruin the vibe.

Two encores later, Murdoch ran through the crowd and stopped to dance with fans and posed for pictures. After an “I didn’t think we were done yet” from Murdoch at the start of the second encore, the show officially ended with the bubbly Another Sunny Day.

Fear not the legacy band, it might just be one of the shows of your life.