Belle And Sebastian cancel North American tour over health concerns
Stuart Murdoch writes that, "my health took a dive around November 2022"
Bad news for fans of Belle And Sebastian tonight, as the Scottish indie pop group announced that it’s canceling a planned North American tour. Specifically, band leader Stuart Murdoch broke the news on social media earlier this week, with the announcement coming just a few weeks after North American tour dates were set.
As Murdoch noted in his statement, he’s been suffering from serious health issues for some time, writing that, “As you might be aware my health took a dive around November 2022. While I am hoping that I will improve over the coming months, we felt it would be a safer route to cancel this tour and leave a clear path to recovery, rather than take a risk and have to cancel at the last minute.” As noted by Metro, this isn’t the first tour that the band has had to cancel in recent months; legs in the U.K. and South America were previously canceled. In previous interviews, Murdoch has revealed that he suffers from myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, and has for several decades.
Belle And Sebastian have been active since 1996, with Murdoch, Stevie Jackson, Sarah Martin, Chris Geddes, and Richard Colburn forming the core of the group across the last 20-plus years. The band released a new album, A Bit Of Previous, last year, and followed it up with a new one, Late Developers, this past week. As Murdoch put it in his post: “We had a great plan in place, to release our second lp in six months and hit America up again! While the record made it out, we’re going to have to wait a bit longer until we can tour it.”
No word yet on when any of the canceled tour dates, either for the North American tour, or the earlier cancellations, will be rescheduled.