The Beths, the New Zealand-based quartet of vocalist Elizabeth Stokes, guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and drummer Tristan Deck, announce their new album, Straight Line Was A Lie, their first for their new label ANTI- out 29th August, and share the new single/video, āNo Joyā.
The Beths know the futility of straight lines. Existential vertigo serves as the primary theme on the indie heroesā fourth album. The Beths posit that the only way round is through; that even after going through difficult, transformative experiences, you can still feel as though you’ve ended up in the same place. It’s a bewildering thing, realising that life and personal growth are cyclical and continual. That a chapter doesnāt always end with peace and acceptance. That the approach is simply continuing to try, to show up.
āLinear progression is an illusion, What life really is is maintenance. But you can find meaning in the maintenance.ā Stokes explains.
The path from The Bethsā critically celebrated and year-end-list-topping 2022 album Expert In A Dying Field to Straight Line Was A Lie was anything but straightforward. For the first time, Stokes was struggling to write new songs beyond fragments sheād recorded on her phone. Sheād recently started taking an SSRI, which on one hand made her feel like she could āfixā everything broken in her life, from her mental and physical health to fraught family dynamics.
At the same time, writing wasnāt coming as easily as it had before.
āI was kind of dealing with a new brain, and I feel like I write very instinctually,ā she says. āIt was kind of like my instincts were just a little different, they weren’t as panicky.ā
While Stokes felt a huge relief from taking an SSRI, she articulates the emotional trade-offs on todayās single, āNo Joyā, which thunders in with Deckās vigorous percussion and drops another classic Beths soundbite: āThis yearās gonna kill me / Gonna kill me.ā Ironically, though, the stress Stokes sings about canāt touch her, thanks to her pharmaceutical regimen. She wants the feeling back.
“It’s about anhedonia, which, paradoxically, was there both in the worst parts of depression, and then also when I was feeling pretty numb on my SSRI,ā Stokes says.
āIt wasn’t that I was sad, I was feeling pretty good. It was just that I didn’t like the things that I liked. I wasn’t getting joy from them. It’s very literal.ā
In writing Straight Line Was A Lie, Stokes and Pearce broke down the typical Beths writing process. For inspiration, they read Stephen Kingās On Writing, How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, and Working by Robert A. Caro. Liz broke out a Remington typewriter (a birthday gift from Beths bassist Benjamin Sinclair) every morning for a month, writing 10 pagesā worth of material – mostly streams of consciousness.
The resulting stack of paper was the primary fodder for an extended writing retreat to Los Angeles between tours, where Stokes and Pearce also leaned heavily into LAās singular creative atmosphere, went to shows, watched Criterion classics from Kurosawa, and listened to Drive-By Truckers, The Go-Goās, and Olivia Rodrigo. Opening themselves up to a wave of creative input, plus Stokesā free-flowing writing routine, proved therapeutic.
āWriting so much down forced me to look at stuff that I didn’t want to look at, In the past, in my memories. Things I normally don’t like to think about or I’m scared to revisit, Iām putting them down on paper and thinking about them, addressing them.ā Stokes says.
Already a celebrated lyricist, Stokes has long impressed fans and critics with wryly knowing song titles like āFuture Me Hates Meā and āExpert In A Dying Fieldā – catchy, instant-classic turns of phrase that capture the personal and ladder up to the universal. But Stokesā intentional deconstruction and rebuilding of her relationship to writing, however, has resulted in a complete renewal. Her songwriting has achieved startling new depths of insight and vulnerability, making Straight Line Was A Lie the most sharply observant, truthful, and poetic Beths project to date.
