![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Belle-and-Sebastia-4.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBelle and Sebastian continue to lean into anti-rock while in fact rocking\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBelle and Sebastian continue to lean into anti-rock while in fact rocking\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Photo by Shawn Macomber<\/p>\n
Midway through Belle and Sebastian<\/a>\u2019s airy, enchanting thirtieth anniversary performance <\/a>of the Scottish orchestral pop legend\u2019s 1996 sophomore album If You\u2019re Feeling Sinister at the Adrienne Arsht Center<\/a>\u2019s Knight Concert Hall, someone in the audience took advantage of a not-so-pregnant pause in between-song banter to shout out, \u201cYou rock!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat is something not many people say about us,\u201d frontman and primary songwriter Stuart Murdoch replied without missing a beat. \u201cBut, yes, we rock. Gently.\u201d<\/p>\n It is true, though perhaps a bit paradoxically so: \u201cGentle\u201d in this context seemed to be more an attitude or orientation than a descriptor of the performance itself, which \u2014 especially in contrast to the intimate, confessional vibes of the excellent and affecting solo set from opener Joanna Sternberg<\/a> \u2014 forged a lush Pet-Sounds-meets-Phil Spector wall of sound during the many signature crescendos powered by a ten man-and-woman strong touring lineup.\u00a0<\/p>\n Which is to say, Belle and Sebastian continue to lean into anti-rock while in fact rocking. And, so, while it\u2019s absolutely true, for example, that the exuberant harmonic playing of guitarist\/vocalist Stevie Jackson \u2014 who New Times editor Flor Franceschetti recently interviewed here<\/a> \u2014 on \u201cMe and the Major\u201d or the heartiest apotheotic strum of Murdoch could quite likely beat the devil in a musical duel at the crossroads (\u201csinister\u201d!), the more crooning, frolicsome musical moments, puckish lyrical wordplay, and Murdoch\u2019s bemused stream-of-consciousness observations on Miami provided a ballast that is decidedly more Lord Byron than Sir Mick Jagger.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sign up for the Music newsletter to get the latest stories delivered to your inbox<\/p>\n THANK YOU!<\/p>\n You’re all set.<\/p>\n CLOSE\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n The band was too busy workshopping a name for a friendly lizard by the venue door, chuckling at the nudists on boats outside their hotel window, and serving as enthusiastic ambassadors for Glasgow \u2014 Murdoch (jokingly?) told the crowd he\u2019d buy anyone who made the journey and told him they were at the Arsht show a fantastic curry \u2014 for the traditional rock n\u2019 roll conquests.<\/p>\n On a more macro level, the show was everything an anniversary tour should be \u2014 but rarely is. The arrangements and nuances in the performances of the Sinister songs revealed a group of musicians still creatively restless, still devoted to teasing out new emotions and tones in the source material. (\u201cIt took thirty years,\u201d Murdoch marveled at one point, \u201cbut I think we\u2019re pretty tight!\u201d) They also acknowledged the anniversary across broader dimensions, with Murdoch offering a bit of backstory before a couple of songs and a video intro of Ciara MacLaverty (the friend of Murdoch\u2019s whose portrait appears on the cover of the album) telling sweet stories of that era\u2019s quivering balancing act on the knife\u2019s edge dividing obscurity and global success. (It is interesting, no, to think of how many people \u2014 such as myself \u2014 have over the years retroactively discovered the late, great Nick Drake<\/a>, who died in 1974, through Belle and Sebastian fandom, criticism.)<\/p>\n One or two songs in, Murdoch promised to stay true to the original album\u2019s sequencing. Belle and Sebastian kept that promise, but the second set of curated classics was more eclectic and curveball-y featuring the title track from the 1997 EP \u2014 though apparently recorded pre-1996\u2019s full-length debut Tigermilk \u2014 Dog on Wheels; \u201cAnother Sunny Day\u201d from The Life Pursuit (2006); \u201cSeymour Stein,\u201d \u201cA Summer Wasting,\u201d and the title track from The Boy with the Arab Strap (1998); \u201cLittle Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John,\u201d originally a duet with Norah Jones, and \u201cI Want from Belle and Sebastian Write About Love (2010). Considering the band is playing two nights in some cities, pairing a full\u00a0Tigermilk\u00a0set with\u00a0Sinister,\u00a0it\u2019s a bit surprising there wasn\u2019t something from the debut, though a glance at setlists from other dates on the tour suggests the \u201cencore\u201d sets are improvised to a large degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n No matter. The crowd at Arsht was as polite and well-behaved as one might expect Belle and Sebastian fans in an upscale concert hall to be, but enthusiastic nonetheless, providing fervent, rafter-rattling backup on the choruses, coming up out of their seats to sway dance when the rhythm called for it, and setting their rapt attention on Murdoch between songs.\u00a0<\/p>\n In short? Let\u2019s be cheeky like Murdoch and call the Sinister tour a twee-umph for the ages.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belle and Sebastian continue to lean into anti-rock while in fact rocking Photo by Shawn Macomber Midway through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1823,225,227,226,12316],"class_list":["post-275292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-concert-reviews","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-touring-artists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Belle-and-Sebastia.jpg\")
On a more macro level, the show was everything an anniversary tour should be \u2014 but rarely is.<\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Belle-and-Sebastian.jpg\")
Guitarist\/vocalist Stevie Jackson performing last night. <\/p>\n