I like The Beths. I like The Beths a lot. When I wrote about their 2022 album, Expert in a Dying Field, I waxed rhapsodic about the band’s profound ability to mature without losing their edge or energy. The album presented the lyricism of Elizabeth Stokes in a fresh light, especially her reflections on love and relationships. It also found the group pursuing different logical directions for the future of their sound. Yet, I wondered what further maturation might sound like. While I love artistic growth, it also needs to mean something.
Welcome to Straight Line Was a Lie.
Across ten remarkable songs, this talented New Zealand quartet delivers bristling power-pop with extends their string of kickass albums to four. Across their widest spectrum of styles yet, the group provides crisp execution and a nuanced approach to their music-making. Their first release for ANTI-, most of the tracks are bright and fun-loving on the surface, while being sly, wry, and emotional underneath. The Beths are proof that upbeat zingers don’t have to be brassy and snotty to grab the listeners’ attention and then hold it.
I am enamored by the deft arrangements and refined production. Stokes and Jonathan Pearce use guitar chord structures in curious patterns to create a sense of familiarity without relying on sonic cliches. The polished drumming of Tristan Deck offers up a welcome dance partner for the vigorous bass lines of Benjamin Sinclair. Everything sounds completely grownup and accomplished while never coming across as stodgy or safe.
It also helps that Elizabeth Stokes has penned some of her best songs yet.
The central metaphor of the album sits right in its title. We have been taught, as a society, that there is typically one way to do just about anything. This includes how to be successful in art, politics, business, government, your family, and more. Bookstores, colleges, religious institutions, and therapists’ offices overflow with people preaching clear and direct paths on how to achieve. However, anyone who has truly lived and is truthful about it will tell you that there are often multiple paths available, and NONE of them have been, are, or will ever be a straight line.
So, when Stokes opens the title track with, “Guess I’ll take the long way / ‘Cause every way’s the long way / And I don’t know if I can go round again,” I know exactly what she means. On “No Joy,” she discusses her frustrations with her emotions with the lines, “Wanted to cry but I couldn’t / Tear ducts full, I felt you pulling at them / But it didn’t happen.”
With “Mother, Pray for Me,” the most intimate song in the band’s catalog, I wept when I heard, “Mother don’t cry for me / I have done enough injury / I wanted to hurt you for the hurt you made in me / And I know that I’m why you cried.” Closing out the album with “Best Laid Plans,” she rips the wound right open in verse two: “I can see strength, but I shrink / it’s too dazzling a light ray / I could thin it out / Dilution / Drip it in my veins / ‘Til I’m great.”
Straight Line Was a Lie is a cohesive collection of songs in a near-perfect track order.
The grooves, dynamics, and vibes all ebb and flow with aplomb. The band sings about love, regret, longing, family, and creativity with a warmth and energy that I found refreshing. The tunes balance brooding introversion and starry-eyed determination by ensuring a maturity to the moodiness. The Beths once again prove that you can grow up and be true to yourself without resorting to routines.