It was a rather last-minute decision on my part to run down to a sold-out Chalk to see The Beths. To be honest, I had a stinking cold, only knew the band’s top hit, and don’t love going to gigs alone on a good day… it wasn’t looking promising. So, after stupidly missing the support (fellow Kiwis Dateline, who I saw briefly afterwards, selling merch from a suitcase in the seafront carpark), I walked into the venue five minutes before the main act was about to play.

“Lyrically laid-back domain, chewing over the haze of hometowns and childhood loves”

But what an utter travesty it would have been if I had decided to stay at home. Miss Elizabeth Stokes and co. granted the audience a masterclass in jangle, a term likely rinsed by reviewers. There’s no denying the joyful Marr-esque guitar solos which were welcomed by the audience’s audible cheers and visible grins. Label-mates with the likes of Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman, The Beths are yet to employ the steel guitar, but they occupy the same lyrically laid-back domain, chewing over the haze of hometowns and childhood loves.

Currently touring their new album Straight Line Was A Lie, released back in August, the band proclaim that life’s direction might not always move in the way we expect it to. While the album tackles the harsh routines of adulthood, the title track references with resolve: “guess I’ll take the long way,” merging optimistic vocals from all four members.

“The Beths excelled at keeping the energy of the crowd up throughout their set with dry humour”

Fluctuating between high-speed hits and more sombre melodies, ‘Metal’ (perhaps my favourite from the album) is a lovely meditation on simply existing in a human body, encountering struggles with mental health and the rigour of touring. The Beths add to an arsenal of calmer indie material named antithetically (see also Panchiko’s ‘D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L’, and Mr Cameron Winter’s Heavy Metal), where ringing guitars and soft cadences replace screamo vocals. With riffs resonant of The Cure, a contemplation of ebbing and flowing mundanity emerges, curving from the path of the Straight Line.

Engaging in much down-to-earth audience banter, The Beths excelled at keeping the energy of the crowd up throughout their set with dry humour, which is something that I have found bands lacking in recently (cough, Wet Leg, cough). Impressed last time they played Brighton by a crowd of traffic cone-like pint glasses, lit underneath by phone flashlights, they asked Chalk’s punters for a recreation. The sibling-like dynamic of the band evolved into a wholesome display to pass the baton of chat, taking turns to compliment and promote each other’s ventures and side-projects. Too small of a venue to put up their usual banner onstage, they stopped to explain the seemingly random web link that replaced it. Bassist Benjamin Sinclair’s magnum opus is the ‘Breakfast and Travel Updates’ website, a beautiful documentation of the band’s tours (since 2019) reviewing the appetising (and not so appetising) food consumed whilst on the road.

“Stokes grapples with the footnotes of an extinct love”

With an endearing thanks to the audience for being “so south,” the band jumped into ‘No Joy’, a song that featured an invention from drummer Tristan Deck, introducing the ingenuity of the ‘recorder launcher’ (cue patent, “TM, TM, TM”). Harking back to the days of primary school music lessons that your mother encouraged and simultaneously discouraged, the pre-chorus saw both guitarist Jonathan Pierce and bassist Sinclair each stamping on their pedal board to catch and then play a flying recorder. Silly? Maybe. Revolutionary? I think so.

The final track ‘Expert In A Dying Field’ (the single I had heard!) was welcomed by several “yays” and “awws” from the audience. Simplicity both sonically and thematically is what I think makes The Beths’ music so irresistibly catchy, and applicable to all. Played out in a series of languid refrains with a bounding bassline, in this case Stokes grapples with the footnotes of an extinct love, built only from now-useless, nonsensical shared languages and remaining inside jokes. When the song calls the final frustrated question “How does it feel?” I can’t help but be reminded of The Flaming Lips’s ‘Do You Realize? ’ which shares the same inexplicably mournful catharsis.

In just the nick of time, The Beths quietly have become one of the best bands I’ve seen in a while. They present unpretentious indie pop in its purest, most beautiful form, serving me with a hopeful beacon (in the shape of a glowing pint glass?) for the term ahead.