“I’ll have an injection then I’ll be fine.” Indeed he was, though it was a sign that the band’s mammoth touring schedule had taken its toll. It amazes me that someone can finish a gig in Brisbane and then jump on a plane and start work on a laptop.”Certainly, this was a gig made for the band. Alongside their roots in a sound that owes much to Love’s west coast sound, much of the group’s recent work has been orchestrated, notably their work with big-name producer Trevor Horn on their 2003 album, Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Yesterday afternoon, though, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Soundmen and officials swarmed across the wide, deep stage and throughout the warren of backstage corridors, technical suites and green rooms.

Through them, Stuart marched with a stern expression, while guitarist Stevie Jackson wandered with a concerned air.Then bassist Bobby Kildea ambled by. You had to look twice to realise the wrist in a plastic cast belonged to the same guy. “Yeah, I’ve got to go to the hospital,” he drawled in his Northern Ireland accent, shrugging off his repetitive strain injury. “He wasn’t classically trained, he was a chemist at university, but he’s certainly grown into this role. So I would never have suggested it myself, but when someone else comes up with it, it’s easier for the group to digest.”An obvious choice to arrange the group’s songs with the LA Phil was multi-instrumentalist Mick Cooke.

I’ve always liked it and the original idea of the band was to have a small orchestral palette that would be as important as the guitars and stuff. We’d been moving away from that, especially on record, because the group prefer to play as such and make their mark. I like the idea of city festivals, but it felt like a support slot to The Strokes and not like our audience.”Despite regularly using strings, a flute or even orchestras on their recorded material, the band had not thought about doing something similar before “On the whole, they are against things orchestral. Is this really happening?”It makes you wonder whether artists can really enjoy a gig on that scale, with the months of organisation and people paying top dollar to sit in front of the stage. Murdoch believes otherwise, and compares the Bowl with a recent howler, the band’s poor show at the Wireless Festival in London’s Hyde Park, where they failed to connect with the crowd.”I would give it up in an instant if it was something I didn’t enjoy Wireless depressed me for a week afterwards. When we got up there that’s precisely what happened, so I had an existential crisis during the first two numbers. Once the band had a reputation for being difficult, now veils are being pulled away as the Belles get used to being a fixture in the public eye.
Finally under reasonable cover, Murdoch is happy to talk about last night’s performance.