Live Review: Belle And Sebastian, Badly Drawn Boy @ The Palais, Melbourne

Tonight's concert by one of Scotland's most beloved bands is a testament to the power of consistency over innovation. Since the career-making brilliance of the clutch of EPs released in the mid to late 1990s and their first four albums, Belle And Sebastian have spent much of this century releasing charming and listenable music whose varying quality is almost entirely dependent upon how personal singer-songwriter Stuart Murdoch feels like being.

Live, the band's greatest asset is still Murdoch, and he is getting close to the source of his Caledonian charm and songwriting genius. It's a force that can fill the Palais on what seems like a triennial basis, and you get the impression that, even if the band were to write no new music in the future, they could continue to do so for the next several decades. Tonight, the crowd is primarily made up of people who were at the band's previous shows, and all of us have favourite songs we're hoping to hear.

But first, Badly Drawn Boy.

Almost as much as his music, Badly Drawn Boy, or Damon Gough, was known in musical circles for his troubles with alcohol and drugs. Now nearly ten years sober and with a renewed focus on music, Gough's songs, melodic folk-pop paeans to loneliness, heartbreak and the fragility of the human condition sound even more poignant.

Fluid melodies slip over gentle guitar strums, looped lines, or arpeggios plucked out on electric piano. Songs like Silent Sigh, The Shining and Once Around The Block still shine brightly, but in the context of Gough's one-man band execution, with a black beanie tightly pulled to his brows and a tetchiness in his manner, there is something even sadder about them now.

"OK, this ordeal is nearly over," he says drily, finishing up Born In The UK. Gough is playing songs from 20 years ago as a busker rather than a band, but they still glow with a burnished sheen, and he is still a formidable talent.

As Belle And Sebastian arrive to the strains of their opening song, Nobody's Empire, which doubles as the name of Murdoch's first novel, due in January, the crowd cheers wildly.

Behind the band, sepia-toned videos of Scottish life unfold: faces, games, and daily chores. Dirty Dream Number Two and So In The Moment follow, and soon, Murdoch chats with us with his trademark warmth.

"Has anyone tried olive oil coffee?" He asks, clearly expecting the world's caffeine capital to offer some opinions. We don’t, but follow-up enquiries about Anzac biscuits have likely prompted the delivery of several tins to a green room for a future show as the band continue their tour to Adelaide and Perth. When Belle and Sebastian launch into She's Losing It, from their debut album, Tigermilk, the crowd comes to life in a way we haven't seen so far: a crack of handclaps, a chorus of voices; this is what we're here for.

Later career songs like Dress Up In You and To Be Myself Completely get warm appreciation, especially a countrified version of Piazza, New York Catcher. "This next song is...god, it's half as old as me, that's weird," says Murdoch, introducing his 1996 song My Wandering Days Are Over in a mild state of shock.

The appeal of a song like this isn't just the song itself but also the naivety of its inspiration, writing and production. Many of the songs we love were written and performed before the band had even formed, when they were simply musicians brought in to help flesh out Murdoch's home recordings. The song is glorious, but its appeal comes more from evoking the version we know so well rather than the performance itself. 

When Murdoch forgets some lyrics and insists on performing them solo with his guitar after the song has concluded, we're perhaps even closer to that familiar version, nearly 30 years old.

"Thank you, Melbourne," he says after he completes the song. “Not every city would be so kind to this revisionism.” Of course, we love to hear this, but it's not until we're three-quarters of the way into the set, after Murdoch has promised that "from this point on we're going to get a bit jiggy", and to the opening notes of Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying, do we collectively get to our feet.

Now, it feels like we're giving as much as we're getting. The Boy With The Arab Strap prompts a tightly controlled stage invasion, giving the numerous security guards something to do. Murdoch leads his stage guests in a loose interpretive conga line around the stage before letting everyone get even looser to the band’s late-period floor-filler I Didn't See It Coming.

Closing the set with a euphoric version of Sleep The Clock Around and returning for a solitary encore of Stars Of Track And Field, Belle And Sebastian have completed the miracle. They may be a legacy act, a band we come to see for songs from the previous century, but they know it, we know they know it, and everyone loves it. As the crowd pours out into the night air of St Kilda, there is the sense of a collective hope that they can do it all over again in three years’ time.