ESP

Gigging, I used to love it. I needed my weekly fix. I hated to miss anything, and staying in the know, in the loop, it was vital to me.

Nowadays it's a rarity to find myself at a concert. Tonight I'm doing it – I'm reliving that familiar feeling of standing around drink in hand, waiting for a band to come on, shifting my weight from foot to foot; ever so slightly impatient. The name of the support due onstage doesn't ring any bells. Tim Ten Yen. Nothing. No bells. I've been on the brink of it all for years now, and missing it in many ways, but not enough to get back involved. I've lost interest in investigating new bands, and I like a lot of things but not enough any more to really care. I'm into different sounds now. I no longer respect this genre in the way I used to. It's something I started getting into when I was what, 16? I’m 24. People grow up and tastes change. Those cringing photos of that ever so rebellious phase are proof enough. I believe a dog collar made a guest appearance a few times.

Tim Ten Yen is a cockney one-man band, a try-hard Londonner, a geezer in a suit. He performs some fairly hard hitting solid tracks which he happily bops along to. I consider looking him up on MySpace. But then I forget. Next is Eugene McGuinness, an acoustic guitarist whose floaty lullaby Bold Street sends me off on a drifting trail of thought which I get lost in for most of the set. When I come to, they are still playing similarly floaty tunes and I am bored.

But next is big for me. Really big.

When I was in my last years of school, still unsure of things, of where I stood in the world, and still a little bit angry about everything, then I liked Electric Soft Parade. More than that: I was almost a groupie. I wasn't under any misconceptions about their music - it was above average indie pop but nothing technically or musically groundbreaking, it just clicked all the right buttons inside me when I heard it. They were poor live performers, and I knew that too. They'd screw up and argue and be all over the place and basically not very likeable but I still followed them. But when it was good and it worked, I'd watch, listen and feel all at once satisfied and content.

My loyal gigging friend Edd sent me their new album but I haven't listened to it. I regret it now that I'm here and I will know hardly any of their songs. It'll be fresh though, or that's how I console myself. They come onstage and I look back at Edd, grinning excitedly. I am genuinely very excited. They look older, in a strangely comforting way. They're my sort of age, which means they've had about as much growing up as I've had in the past few years and I know what that means. They look so much more comfortable in their skins, and between each other. There's no arguing any more. They don't care they're in a shoddy student union and it is only half full, instead of a sold-out Shepherd's Bush Empire - they are just making music. They look a bit like... like a real band. Geppetto would be proud. Before, it felt like they were my band. Mine and Edd's and the other inherently geeky fans who loved them, and they didn't have to be impressive because whatever they did we knew we'd still be there to watch and listen and adore and secretly not mind if they got a bad review because they'd still be ours and not everybody else's.

They begin with ‘Empty At The End’, the first track I ever heard of theirs and it's just how it used to be but tighter, slicker, more altogether complete. I can't stop smiling and unabashedly love this moment. I stop myself from getting carried away: nostalgia has a lot to do with this euphoria. However, the band still appear pretty watertight. My excuse to myself about them sounding fresh, as it turns out, is true. I'm absorbed in the sounds and I listen to them with delight. They play two more old songs, a haunting ‘Silent To The Dark’ from the first album and the innocent sounding ‘Lose Yr Frown’ from ‘The American Adventure’. These bring back the same pleasantness in me that they use to, and I can't help but turn around yet again to Edd and make a stupid happy face at him, because it's a bit like the old days.

I may be acting like some middle aged bore about this, but it is a while ago now and I do feel like I've grown up, weirdly, "with" these guys who don't know me at all, and who I don't have a clue about really either. But looking at them fills me with all this stuff and all these memories of me becoming, well, me, and I can't help but fall under the illusion that I do know them.

I'm not going to obsess about the Electric Soft Parade, but as crass as it may be to say, I still think they are really good and for some reason every tune they create still strikes a big gratifying chord with me, and I'm helpless, I have to love them for it. Again.

Oh, and I still fancy Alex.