Belle and Sebastian: 2017

Belle and Sebastian spent the summer of 2017 on tour in North America, the UK and Europe, both headlining shows and festivals. They were traveling on the very distant heels of their 2015 album, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, and far ahead of a series of EPs they’re projecting for the year ahead. The early harbinger of that multi-volume project, which  Stuart Murdoch calls How To Solve Our Human Problems, is a single, “We Were Beautiful.”

On the day of my long-distance chat with Murdoch, the band had a small problem on their hands: they’d accidentally misplaced their drummer, Richard Colburn, in North Dakota. While not quite a Spinal Tap moment, a lost drummer wasn’t what the band had in mind for their cross-country trek. But Glaswegians always find a way to persevere and Belle and Sebastian managed to play a couple of older songs for us — and Murdoch also revealed some of the band’s long-term plans.

[recorded: 8/15/17]