THE BETHS

THE BETHS/CHERYM AT THE LOFT, SOUTHAMPTON – 27/3/22

While I’m waiting for the support band to start I have a great idea for a band name: Support Band. I think Support Band would be a great name for a band.

As soon as CHERYM start playing a man at the front starts jumping up and down – pogoing, I think they used to call it, though I’ve not seen anyone doing it for a while – in a ferocious fashion. It’s quite something, the intensity with which he is jumping up and down. It makes me nervous, but also makes me want to laugh. The sheer level of enthusiasm just seems absurd to me. It is hard to maintain for too long and every so often he has a break and makes do with just headbanging and raising his arm in a way that resembles a clenched-fist Nazi salute. It’s quite disturbing energy. It’s the sort of energy that fascists would definitely exploit. It’s this, kind of, I think, desperate male energy; a desperate need to belong, to be accepted, maybe, by something, anything, anything at all. At least that’s how it seems to me, but I may be wrong.

  Cherym are from Derry in Ireland, and play really high energy indie stuff. It’s relentlessly upbeat and cheerful, and they talk so quickly between songs that I can hardly make out a word they are saying. But that’s probably just me. If there’s a fault, it’s almost certainly with me. I am finding this all a bit intense, the energy and the cheerfulness, and the jumping up and down. It’s a young person’s game, for sure, all this high energy stuff. I actually find it quite frightening. I am standing next to a very tall boy, and I have to keep moving to avoid his elbows.

High energy

When I was younger and I first started going to gigs I used to look around at the audience and see all these middle-aged people and wonder what the hell they were doing there. It baffled me that middle-aged people could like the same thing as me. It didn’t make any sense. Tonight, I am one of those middle-aged people and I wonder what the hell I am doing here. I don’t belong here, I think. I should be at home helping wife put the kids to bed and then doing my ironing for the week ahead. It’s not that I don’t like the music; it’s just that maybe it’s not for me. It’s for the pogoing guy, and the tall boy with the elbows, and the clean-shaven boy next to me who knows every word to every song, and the young girls behind me taking selfies every five seconds. It’s for them. Not me. Their enthusiasm makes me feel like a casual fan, which I suppose I am. I recognise most of the songs, but I couldn't tell you what they're called.

  THE BETHS certainly attract an enthusiastic crowd. “Thanks for coming,” says Elizabeth Stokes, the singer. “Thank you for coming,” comes a reply. (‘Thank You for Coming,’ I think. ‘That would be a great name for a novel or story or something.’ I’m full of great names for things tonight.) And then someone shouts, “I fucking love you!” and “When’s your third album coming out?” which prompts the rather cagey reply, “Soonish,” and people keep shouting out asking them what their favourite birds are, for some reason. They’re a really good band, anyway; they’ve got it all worked out. They must practise a lot.

Good band