Chastity Belt, a down-to-earth band from Seattle, took to a Southampton stage to perform a euphoric set.
-
6
It was a cold October evening as I excitedly entered The Joiners, a popular venue in Southampton that has just reached 50 years of age. We arrived there pretty late due to getting lost along the way, so the venue was already packed and full of people ordering drinks at the bar and waiting at the stage.
The band came on stage and giggled with each other as they set up their instruments. They began to play one of their newer tracks, ‘It Takes Time’, which is heavily instrumental. This was a calm yet refined introduction to their music and was definitely worth seeing live.
What I found quite endearing is that the bassist, Annie Truscott, the chattiest of the four, declared that she had been watching Twilight on the way to Southampton. She asked the crowd whether they were team Jacob or Edward, which was quite well received considering half of the crowd were men who were over the age of 40 (I’m assuming they didn’t share the interest in Twilight with the band but maybe I am being presumptuous).
One thing that jeopardised the gig a bit is that the band experienced quite a lot of technical problems. Almost between every song they played, they asked the technician to change the volume of various instruments, which took up quite a lot of time between songs and kind of took some excitement away from the show. However, when they did play their songs, they sounded flawless.
Something else that was amusing is that the band stated that they had never been to Southampton before, and multiple people in the crowd shouted statements about how it’s not the most beautiful city (to say the least). The band laughed at this and it was quite funny to see this relationship with the crowd.
After they had left the stage, the crowd called for an encore, so they resiliently returned and played two more songs. One of these was the song ‘Seattle Party’, which many people knew the words to, and there was a sense of community as people danced to the upbeat sound of the song. This was a lovely ending to their performance, which was worth the watch, in spite of the hurdles.
Stay in the loop with Chastity Belt here.
