Straight line leads up – The Beths: Live at The Roundhouse
Let’s be real here, we all love a gimmick, don’t we?
We all like to pretend we aren’t, but we’re all at least a little bit susceptible to a bit of flash, razzle-dazzle and showmanship. Especially in the world of rock music, putting on a show is often a sign of ambition, of creativity.
This is all theatre after all, so why not paint yourself blue and fly down from the rafter, shooting sparks out of your armpits before launching into your concept album about an intergalactic war between Gods and monsters?
Especially in guitar music, when the last 25 years of the genre have (with some notable exceptions) had all the ambition of an omnibus of The Archers. A rigid procession of nice middle-class boys with little, if anything, to say about anything save for that ol’ chestnut, ‘Um, y’know, we just make music for ourselves and if, y’know, gosh, anyone likes it then that’s, y’know, a bonus’. In the rigidly conservative world of indie rock, music has to be real, and to be real nothing can be fake, and apparently fake is anything that has a moment spent thinking about the way it looks.
The Beths should be a prime example of this. They are a band so down-to-earth they probably count as a kind of terrain. A band so defiantly DIY that they are still clearly tech-ing and setting up their own instruments while they headline 3000 capacity venues (those boymoder hoodies aren’t fooling anyone lads). Their backdrop looks like the result of a brilliant arts and crafts day at a primary school, and they don’t even have a walkout track when the houselights dim and they hit the stage.
This should be as exciting as tea without milk, sugar or a teabag. However, The Beths have one small fact going in their favour: they might just be the best band in the world, and I really can’t see who’s closing in on them.
…but what makes The Beths this good?
Other indie rock bands act out sincerity and so-called “realness” as a way of covering for their lack of ideas. With the Beths, the opposite is true. The sheer emotional depth and complexity of their music is somewhat camouflaged by how resolutely normal they appear, onstage and otherwise. Even in their sheer skill as a live act, this isn’t a band that throws their astonishing chops in your face. They only reveal themselves as capital M-musicians who all met while studying jazz at the University of Auckland when you look close enough.
Annoyingly, this down-to-earth unpretentiousness isn’t even covering up a lack of personality. Their between-song banter has an endearingly hilarious line of dry wit. Some of the biggest reactions of the night come from the band doing everything they can to replicate their studio sound. From singer and guitarist Elizabeth Stokes wielding a triangle while playing guitar on ‘Best Laid Plans’ to lead guitarist Jonathan Pearce and bassist Benjamin Sinclair launching lime green recorders from spring-loaded foot-pedals to play the woodwind hooks on opener ‘Straight Line Was a Lie‘.
Above all, what sets The Beths up as possibly the best band in the world are the songs. Inventive, melodic and deeply endearing, whether they’re the frenzied pop-punk ramalama of their early albums or the more studied, Cure-esque guitar pop of their recent work, it works. Which leads to the question at the heart of this review, are The Beths as good as they are because of how down-to-earth they are, or despite it? Would spreading their wings and aiming for world domination ruin what they’ve got going for them, or whisper it, could they become even better than this?
None of this is to accuse The Beths of not having ambition. No band writes songs as nakedly personal as ‘Mother, Pray For Me’, as serene as ‘Roundabout’ or as out-and-out fun as ‘Dying to Believe’ while believing all this is a lark. However, as the crowd funnels out of The Roundhouse, staggered by the coming-of-age rock show we just saw, there isn’t one person among the 3000-odd attendees who believes the band has peaked.
Quite simply, The Beths are the best band in the world, so what happens if they start acting like it? 4.5 stars.
