I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: March 3, 2023] The Beths

I saw The Beths about a year ago at Underground Arts.  Since then they have now moved up from the 650 person venue to Union Transfer (1500) which they also sold out!  Great new for them!

The Beths are actually suddenly everywhere and had we played our cards right we could have seen them like four times this year (opening for The National and a couple of other places).  But this wound up being the only show we’ll see them at.  And that’s fine because it was great and certainly tides us over for a while.

The Beths are a four piece: Elizabeth Stokes, singer and guitarist.  Jonathan Pearce who plays lead guitar. Benjamin Sinclair on bass and Tristan Deck on drums.  When introducing each other, they told “fex” about each other.  The New Zealand accent is awesome–fex would be Facts.  Like the fact that Benjamin Sinclair has a blog and Instagram account with the awesome name of Breakfast and Travel Updates. 

S. came with me and thought she was going to get a mellow show, but I warned her that last time a couple of mosh pits were attempted.

In the bigger venue, the band sounded so much bigger.  They also had a prop–a large inflatable fish (like on the cover of their album).  It was hilarious and didn’t do anything.

The came out to a synthed up version of “Future Me Hates Me.”  And as soon as they settled behind their gear (I love that their tech crew were wearing hoodies with “Guitar Tech” and “Drum Tech” on the back–S. correctly printed out that it would have been even funnier if they had said “Beth Tech”) they ripped into this super catchy song.

The crowd was great–super into it, bouncing along and singing along to the big hits.

The band did a great job of mixing new songs with old songs (although the album has been out since September, so it’s not like the new songs are new anymore).  The newer songs tend to be slightly more mellow than the previous ones, but only slightly.

I feel like the individual instruments all sounded bigger here.  It could just be that I was standing further back, but the bass lines were far more notable to me, and Jonathan Pearce’s guitar solos seemed to really rock out more.  And even better, their backing vocals sounded amazing.  Last time I was really impressed by their backing vocals, but this time, they sounded HUGE.  There were a couple of songs where it seemed like perhaps there were ten people singing along (in addition to the room full of people).

Toward the end of the set, when they played “I’m Not Getting Excited” the crowd couldn’t control themselves anymore and a small pit broke out in the middle of the floor.  It was very small and was mostly just a bunch of friend bouncing off each other and laughing.  I noticed that the Beths acknowledged this in the blog: “the Philly crowd gifted us the first circle-pit of the tour and contributed a fun and ferocious energy the whole night.”

Last time they played 8 songs from Future Me Hates Me.  This time there were only four (that’s what happens when you put out ne music).  I like that they played “You Wouldn’t Like Me” which they didn’t play last time, just to mix it up.

They played six songs from Jump Rope Gazers last time (I assumed they’d play more since it was the new album) and only five this time.  I’m a little bummed they didn’t play “Whatever” a song I love.  But that’s okay.  The one big song they did include was “You Are a Beam of Light” a quiet song from the album which they played as the first encore song.  Elizabeth played guitar and everyone else sang harmony.  It was quite lovely.

But it wasn’t a way to end the show, so they followed that with an absolutely ripping version of “Little Death.”

The show was so good natured and fun.  The audience had fun.  The band had fun and S and I had fun.  And, best of all, they were done before 10:30 and we got home before midnight.  What a  perfect night out.

⊗ Expert in a Dying Field (2022)  [only songs not played from the album: Your Side, Change in the Weather, 2AM]
Ω Jump Rope Gazers (2020)
¶ Future Me Hates Me (2018)
¢ Demos 2014-2020