During the Commonwealth Games 2014 opening ceremony, raspy tomcat Rod Stewart trolled a global audience of millions by insisting on playing Can't Stop Me Now, a functional but unloved song from his current album. On the other side of Glasgow, Belle and Sebastian take the opposite approach to headlining their own Games opening party, staged in a newly pristine 2,000-capacity venue, for whose restoration they campaigned.
"We thought we'd trawl through the back catalogue," says singer Stuart Murdoch. "We've got a lot of old songs that were written within a half-mile radius of here." It's not as if the host city's most cherished indie veterans don't have anything to promote – their as-yet untitled ninth studio album is set for release later this year, while Murdoch's crowdfunded movie fantasia God Help the Girl, his debut as writer and director, comes out next month. But if you subscribe to the theory that B&S were at their most bookishly magnificent in the early running, when they materialised out of nowhere in the late 90s with three staggeringly fully formed albums, the focus on vintage material is even more of a treat than the uncommonly sunny weather.
There is a party atmosphere from the outset, when the band spill on to the stage wearing matching red tracksuits. It's not until Expectations, an urgent, Debenhams-referencing song from their lo-fi debut Tigermilk, however, that the audience abandon the open-air amphitheatre's cool stone benches and clamber to their feet for a celebratory bop.
With toddlers running about and a Commonwealth trivia quiz with beachballs as prizes, it feels like a holiday camp: twee in the park, but in a good way. Murdoch clearly enjoys his role as master of ceremonies, but there's also a spotlight for talented multi-instrumentalist Sarah Martin, who takes lead vocal for I Didn't See It Coming, a finely crafted, bittersweet love song that shows late-period B&S can be as captivating as their bedsit-era output.
The final push begins with an extended intro to the preternaturally catchy The Boy With the Arab Strap, colloquially known as "the one from Teachers". There's a long way to go before Unfailingly Polite Stage Invading is recognised as an official Commonwealth Games sport, but there are a few hundred B&S fans who are already in training, and look worthy of a podium finish.
