REVIEW: The Beards at The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea

After five albums over 11 years with every song extolling the virtues of beards, the Adelaide foursome played their penultimate UK gig in front of an enthusiastic and relatively hairy crowd. Many of the female fans also sported impressive growth although there may be a suspicion that some were artificially assisted.

Playing two sets over two hours, their hirsute heroes opened with Born With A Beard followed by Damn That’s A Good Beard and well, you get the picture as the theme continued.

Frontman Johann Beardraven kept up plenty of banter throughout; ably supported by bassist Nathaniel Beard as they both allowed fans to stroke their beards and chided those of us with only a couple of days of stubble.

Despite this being only their second gig in Portsmouth, many of the crowd knew most of the words and there were some raucous sing-alongs to Beard Accessory Store and No Beard, No Good. However, the biggest reaction was for the encore closer and biggest hit, If Your Dad Doesn’t Have a Beard, You’ve Got Two Mums as the beardless amongst us began to feel that we really should be joining this movement if every night is this much fun.