Belle & Sebastian had Brooklyn Paramount dancing all night (review, pics, video, setlist)
Belle & Sebastian have a special relationship with New York City and seem to always give a little extra here at their shows, and that was true on Wednesday night at Brooklyn Paramount. I’d looked at setlists from their North American tour so far and while they rotate songs regularly, most shows followed a formula, opening with “Nobody’s Empire” and “Allie” (both from Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance). Not in Brooklyn, though. The night started with “The State That I Am In” from their 1996 debut, Tigermilk, which was met by rapturous applause, and then was followed by Dear Catastrophe Waitress‘ “Step Into My Office, Baby.” You could just feel that it was going to be a special show.
And it was. Belle & Sebastian delivered a hitfest of a set that had the crowd dancing the whole night, including 30 or so onstage for “The Boy with the Arab Strap,” which is a move they’ve done for years but is always fun. They’ve also, after years saying it was too difficult to play, added the highly requested “Your Cover’s Blown” into the 2024 repertoire. Murdoch forgot some of the words but Stevie Jackson and Sarah Martin were there to pick up the slack, and for the middle (non-disco) section he sang from atop the crowd. When he wasn’t playing piano or guitar, Stuart was dancing up a storm, which kind of made him Belle & Sebastian’s frontman and Bez all in one.
The Brooklyn Paramount setlist also included “Seeing Other People,” “The Fox in the Snow,” “I Didn’t See it Coming” (with crowd dancers still on stage), “If She Wants Me,” “If You Find Yourself Caught in Love,” “Dress Up in You,” and as they usually do in NYC, “Piazza, New York Catcher,” during which Murdoch borrowed a fan’s baseball cap to wear.
Back to Murdoch’s NYC love, at one point the show turned into a charming slideshow of his day in the city. He also told a story about how when the band first visited New York in the mid-’90s, before they ever actually played here, they wanted to do a rock band move and throw a TV out of the window of their hotel (“we thought that’s what you had to do!”), but it wouldn’t open far enough so they threw out a clock radio instead, which was “the most Belle & Sebastian thing possible.”
The encore, meanwhile, started in the most Scottish way possible, with bagpipes, played by a fan who had messaged the band offering his assistance. Stuart said they tried to work up a rendition of “Sleep Around the Clock,” which features bagpipes, until they remembered that when recording it they had to slow the tape down as bagpipes are tuned differently. (They played that song, bagpipe-free, earlier in the night.) There were then a few fan requests, including Tigermilk‘s “Expectations” and snippets of “Allie” and “Marx & Engels,” before leaving the whole room dancing again with “If You Find Yourself Caught in Love.” I’ve seen nearly a dozen B&S shows in NYC over the last 27 years, but this was one for the books.
The Weather Station opened the show with a short full-band set that was maybe a little to gentle for this ready-to-party crowd, but they sounded great, and Tamara Lindeman, who spent much of the show singing crouched down by the stage like Dan Bajar, told us that she was working on the band’s next record; we got to hear a couple of new songs, which were both very good.
Photos of the whole night by P Squared, plus video and the setlist, are below.
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SETLIST: Belle & Sebastian @ Brooklyn Paramount 5/1/2024
The State I Am In
Step Into My Office, Baby
So in the Moment
Seeing Other People
Give a Little Time
If She Wants Me
I Want the World to Stop
Piazza, New York Catcher
Dress Up in You
To Be Myself Completely
The Fox in the Snow
Your Cover’s Blown
Simple Things
The Boy With the Arab Strap
I Didn’t See It Coming
Sleep the Clock Around
Encore:
Allie
Expectations
Marx & Engels
If You Find Yourself Caught in Love
