There’s more to life than “happy” and “sad”. New Zealand indie rock darlings The Beths have been making infectious power pop about that all-too-messy in-between since their very first EP, Warm Blood. Over the past decade, they have released a handful of records that consistently raise the bar, and their latest album, Straight Line Was A Lie, is no exception.
The Beths are known for their lively pop-rock tunes with frontwoman Liz Stokes’ rich, emotionally complex lyrics at the fore, made distinct by the satisfying four-part vocal arrangements featuring her bandmates Jonathan Pearce, Benjamin Sinclair, and Tristan Deck. This time around, though, the Beths are a little more indignant, a little more melancholy, a little more despondent than they ever have been, weighed down by the heaviness of not only the outside world, but Stokes’ internal world, too. Over the course of the album, they push through to the other side, hoping to find balance in that not-happy, not-sad, just-living mentality. As Stokes puts it,
“What life really is is maintenance, and finding meaning in the maintenance.”
The record opens with full-band gang vocals exasperatedly shouting the main message of the entire album: “the straight line was a circle / yeah, the straight line was a lie.” The emotional core of the song comes, though, when Stokes quietly admits her fragility in all of this: “I don’t know if I can go round again.” Those final two words are repeated over and over throughout the second half of the song, as if to trap you on that dangerous carousel, before letting you off on a final chord that leaves you feeling so dizzy your head hurts.
‘Mosquitoes’ explores uncharted territory when it comes to the Liz Stokes songwriting canon. The song’s lyrics mourn the destruction of a creek near Stokes’ childhood home following a natural disaster. Teeming with imperfect rhymes and sensory memories, its verses are diaristic and Lucy Dacus-esque in nature. But true to the Beths Promise™, the chorus hits you right in the heart with your run-of-the-mill, earth-shattering metaphor: having lost an integral part of the home that raised her, she reduces herself to flesh and blood, an incomplete shell wishing for nothing but “to feed mosquitoes.”
The stylistic switch-up makes sense; this album came to be after Stokes did a lot of reading, daily free-writes on a typewriter, watching films, and immersing herself in the cultural offerings of Los Angeles. But her inspirations were hard-fought; the pressures brought about by the critical acclaim for their 2022 LP Expert In A Dying Field, as well as the antidepressants she had recently begun taking, led Stokes into an unprecedented bout of writer’s block. Stokes details her frustrating experience with SSRIs in ‘No Joy‘, a peppy, danceable, art-punk-tinged tune about being utterly unable to feel happiness – or any emotion, for that matter. (The track, which is perhaps my favorite on the album, is made ten times better by bassist Benjamin Sinclair’s absolutely bone-chilling recorder solo.)
As much as Straight Line is an album about anguish, loneliness, and frustration, though, it is also an album about hope, and about love, and perhaps about the inextricable link between the two. In ‘Mother, Pray For Me’, Stokes sings alone over a bare-bones guitar pattern as she grapples with her distant relationship with her mother, the guilt it brings her, and the hopes she has for their dynamic going forward. Rare and powerful is the Beths song that forgoes a full-band arrangement.
“I would like to know you and I want you to know me / Do we still have time? Can we try?”
The band gets back together for ‘Til My Heart Stops’, a refreshing dip back into standard Beths fare: a catchy chord progression, lush backing vocals, and hard-hitting distorted guitars create a perfect pop backdrop for Stokes to wistfully list things she wants to fully experience in life: riding her bike in the rain, feeling emotional highs and lows, loving until she can’t anymore. ‘Roundabout’ is a straight-up mushy love song, almost saccharine in tone, but well-deserved after the roller coaster of emotions the first half of the album worked through.
In our age of stress and isolation, bolstered by an endless well of depressing headlines and, for many, even more depressing lived realities, it’s hard not to resonate with Stokes’ general disillusionment with, well, everything. The Beths have always been adept at capturing the fragile tension between excitement and anxiety; the music makes you want to jump around and headbang and sigh aloud with satisfaction during a particularly magical collection of perfectly harmonized “Ahhhhs” and shake your fists as you yell along to Stokes’ expertly-crafted summations of the difficulties that come with being a human on this Earth, burdened – and blessed – with the ability to feel. Listening to Straight Line Was A Lie feels like listening to a band who nearly lost sight of what made life worth living – those blessedly human feelings – and fought hard to earn them back. After all, healing is a terrifying, messy thing. As ‘Best Laid Plans’ puts it, “I can see strength, but I shrink / it’s too dazzling a light ray.” But when taken slowly, and in small doses, it is possible to claw your way back to the good parts of life, even if they are fleeting, and to find meaning along the way.
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