Writer Mark Roberts / Photographer Connor Pope
As I walk into The Mill on Lower Trinity Street I am taken aback. Most of the people in this venue could be half my age. I double check the event page and lo and behold, it’s 14+. I AM double their age.
The last time I was here I’d seen Alpha Mist and back then there was one option on the bar, San Miguel in cans. This time they’ve really upgraded, with the Estrella tap back on as well as San Miguel on tap. I look at the fridges and there are San Miguels in tinnies. I choose water.
As I get settled the hubbub of the teens is stereotypically loud, I’ve missed the support acts opening songs, but this was in the end a good choice as between the sound man’s incredibly quiet sound for Sidney Gish and the audience’s extreme ability to talk over the music I couldn’t catch much. I believe I hear a song which might be called ‘Persephone’, I’m sure it’d be good if I could hear any of it.
On we move to TV Girl and the sound is far better. Unfortunately, I’m met with what I can only describe as beta Bombay Bicycle Club. TV Girl has all the nonchalance and lack of swagger, with none of the good music. Each tune melts into the next as if they’re one homogenous blob of cardboard flavoured amoebas.
I’m wondering to myself why indie hasn’t developed at all and why no one on stage seems to care that they’re playing to a packed-out room of seemingly adoring fans. I don’t get it, but the audience seems to, so I guess I’m just old.
I’m still curious as to how a band whose debut album was in 2014 has managed to garner such an array of teen girls to come to their show. Then, on the fourth song I see why.
Suddenly all the phones are out after Brad Petering mentions Tik Tok. I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to delve into the realm of a social media company I assume is about comparing your clocks. This is the moment everyone has been waiting for. Turns out the song is really making the rounds on there, as you can tell when all the phones in the room are raised into the air.
Petering however, needs to learn to shut up. His anecdotes are seemingly trying to be funny but instead come across braggadocious and out of touch. At one point Petering talks of a time, he was drunk driving with Justin Bieber, apparently completely unaware that his audience are mostly under the age of 18.
They boo him, understandably.
He continues on to talk about his friend Harry Styles who apparently told him that TV Girl’s song was “the best song ever written”. The anecdotes don’t end, why are you still talking Brad, no one has laughed.
Overall, I would not recommend anyone going to see TV Girl, but I’m clearly not their target audience.
I haven’t even gone into how utterly unimaginative the lyrics were…
Find out more about TV Girl here: www.tvgirl.bandcamp.com
Find out more about Sidney Gish here: www.sidneygish.com/socialmedia.html
For more form The Mill, including full event listings, visit: www.themilldigbeth.com