Live Review: Belle & Sebastian, Twerps

Melbourne quartet Twerps excel at creating breezy, soothing pop, which, while rarely challenging the listener too much, provides quite a lot of enjoyment.

The band spit the soft-pop equivalent of fire at the sensibly shoed audience, who lapped up the band’s simple, sweet melodies and light, jangly guitars. The more vibrant moments in the band’s set called to mind the Flying Nun sound, and the group clearly owe a fair bit to the Go-Betweens, but primarily their set recalled Real Estate or maybe Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - certainly not featherweight or insubstantial, but squarely within the realm of pleasant. The songs did benefit from being played loud, each snaking guitar line cutting through, and each drum fill bursting with quiet power.

Glasgow’s Belle & Sebastian opened their set with Nobody’s Empire, the first track from the group’s new album, Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, and a fine example of their irresistible pop sensibilities, with a simple, powerful piano part and gorgeous melody.

The band has proven their ability to write clever, wistful pop over decades. Soon came The Party Line, the new record’s first single, and its garish synths and drum samples were aptly met with an ostentatious light display. Despite the presence of a 13-piece band, the new tunes (many of which flutter around neo-disco beats) required backing tracks. This rarely caused any real trouble, although seeing Stuart Murdoch miming with unmic’d prop bongos during Perfect Couples was a real shame.

The new stuff did bring variety to the set, which spanned the group’s illustrious career, including favourites like The Stars Of Track And Field, If She Wants Me, and The Boy With The Arab Strap, which for some reason ended up with a dozen-odd fans on stage, some of them ripping their clothes off. The set concluded with Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying; Murdoch slyly winked at the crowd when delivering the line “I always cry at endings.” Belle & Sebastian have reinvented their sound several times in the past, and with each revolution they prove their worth. When it’s all lumped together in a live show, things are bound to get a little messy, but it’s the group’s solid core of great songwriting which holds it all together.