Photo byAnna Isola Crolla
Audio By Carbonatix
This week on New Times Podcast: Midweek Cafecito, we are joined by Belle and Sebastian guitarist and songwriter Stevie Jackson. We talk about the band’s influence on a new generation of artists, the 30th anniversary of Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, and what fans can expect from their upcoming U.S. tour, which kicks off in Miami this weekend.
The Scottish indie band will launch the North American run with a show at Knight Concert Hall on Sunday, May 17, where they’ll perform If You’re Feeling Sinister in full alongside a selection of classic songs from across their catalog. The tour celebrates three decades of the band’s first two albums, Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister, records that helped define indie pop in the late ’90s and continue to resonate with younger generations discovering the band for the first time.
“Essentially, we’re all ready to go,” Jackson says with a chuckle from his apartment while juggling family duties ahead of the tour. “Well, not that we actually ever need that much rehearsal, because we’ve been going for 30 years.”
Miami will get the If You’re Feeling Sinister set rather than Tigermilk, a decision Jackson says came naturally. “If we’re having one show in Miami, the one to do is If You’re Feeling Sinister because that is the more popular record,” he explains. “Historically, it was the record that, in 1997, kind of made our name in America because college radio got hold of it. So I think it’s the natural one to do because it’s historically part of our American story.”
The performance itself will unfold in two parts. First, the band will play the album front to back, followed by a second set featuring songs from throughout their three-decade career. “It’s like a sort of two-part show,” Jackson says. “We come out and do our If You’re Feeling Sinister show, there’s a short gap of a few minutes, and then we come on and just do a bunch of other songs.”
Originally released in 1996, If You’re Feeling Sinister slowly became a defining album of the indie underground before exploding through American college radio the following year. Jackson remembers the rise happening almost in real time. “When the record dropped, it didn’t feel like anything,” he recalls. “It just came out. And then over the next year it became clear something was happening.”
Part of the album’s staying power, according to Jackson, comes from how cohesive it felt from the beginning. “The sequence was in place before we even recorded it,” he says. “It felt like a very strong artistic statement.” Recorded in less than a week, the album captured a moment when the band still existed almost entirely within its own insular creative world, before international attention changed everything.
Jackson admits one of his biggest fears was becoming a band whose audience simply aged alongside them. Instead, he’s been surprised to see teenagers and twenty-somethings showing up in growing numbers over the last few years. “There’s a lot of youngsters out there,” he says. “And that felt really good.”
The full interview with Stevie Jackson is available on Spotify and YouTube.
Midweek Cafecito
A Miami New Times Podcast
Host: Florencia Franceschetti
Guest: Stevie Jackson of Belle and Sebastian
Recorded via Zoom: May 5, 2026
Intro and Outro music by Las Nubes
Belle and Sebastian. 7 p.m. Sunday, May 17, at Knight Concert Hall, 1300 Biscayne Blvd, Miami; 786-468-2000.Tickets are $52.65 – $99.45 via arshtcenter.org.
