Through singer Elizabeth Stokes’ unique prism of jaded humour and thinly veiled despair, the band’s songs shine more beautifully than ever before.
As on their last record, 2022’s excellent ‘Expert in a Dying Field’, The Beths open with the title track, and it is another jewel. ‘Straight Line Was a Lie’ is power pop perfection and has a melody which will get stuck in your neighbour’s head, but it is also a kind of manifesto for the record. Stokes sings over a driving mid-fi guitar riff: “I thought I was getting better, / But I’m back to where I started / And the straight line was a circle / Yeah, the straight line was a lie.” Indie pop has a long history of songwriters who can pack deep wells of angst into catchy, candy-coated lines, but rarely has guilt or chronic self-doubt sounded quite so lovely as in the hands of Stokes. Across the album, the cynicism gets stronger, and the melodies get brighter.
Another shining example is ‘Mother, Pray For Me’, a song with delicately picked guitar, and soft synths in the place of the thundering drums heard elsewhere on the record. These gentler songs could compete with the very best by contemporary folk singers, and another string to Stokes’ bow is that her voice can really articulate meaning; when the band drops out, she is more than capable of filling the space. Her lyrics fit just as well in these mellow songs as in the noisier ones. ‘Mother’ is a poetic appraisal of failed communication, and satisfyingly, she writes with more vulnerability than ever: “Mother, will you talk to me?/ I don't know the tongue in which you dream / Somewhere in the middle, there's a pidgin that we speak”. This is not Stokes ‘mellowing out’; rather, deepening her range, finding new ways to express her particular brand of deadpan, worn-out wit. Failure of all kinds - to communicate, to move on - is the preoccupation, and the band adjusts their sound to accommodate it.
That being said, this would not be a Beths LP without a clutch of addictive singles. ‘Metal’ is one of the prettiest and has enough jangling guitars to make David Crosby cry. For fans of guitar-based pop music, this record is a gold mine of sounds from years gone by, all with their own spin. But songs like ‘Metal’ and ‘Roundabout’ reach for the specific influences from the band’s home country of New Zealand; for myself, this makes The Beths seem like a minor miracle. They feel like a late entry into the canon of bands from the influential Flying Nun label of the 1980s, as if a lost batch of songs by The Clean or The Bats was found and then recorded at a wicked pace and with pinpoint precise musicianship. Tristan Deck’s propulsive drumming on ‘No Joy’ and ‘Take’ would be very much at home on an LP like The Clean’s ‘Vehicle’, which is one made on pretty much the same premise as ‘Straight Line Was A Lie’: that the sunny place conjured by the music is also fundamentally a sad one. It may take you to a beach, but it is not peopled.
Only, The Beths have refined their songcraft into complex new forms. This sets them apart, not only from their Kiwi forebears, but every other indie pop band working now - it is hard to imagine a group of musicians more in lockstep than these. ‘Roundabout’, for example, is a little symphony of hooks, with a high, wandering bassline, and crystalline acoustic guitars strummed throughout; The Beths’ strive at all times to make music which is deeply easy on the ears, but all the while manage to remain compositionally interesting. On top of that, there is the album’s excellent sequencing. Like The La’s’ self-titled, or The Sundays’ ‘Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic’, each song works as a distinctive piece of the record, whilst also fitting into a particular order - each song becomes more appealing in light of the last. The pared-back songs like ‘Mother, Pray For Me’ are offset brilliantly by the sugary singles. By the time you reach ‘Best Laid Plans’, the album’s shimmering closer, it feels like you have experienced the full breadth of The Beths’ sound.
Most of all, ‘Straight Line Was a Lie’ demonstrates the prowess of a songwriter and musicians who have not so much reinvented their sound but refined it to every possible degree. Their songs are gorgeous, withering paeans to existential exhaustion, but worn as lightly as any Beach Boys track. This will not just delight those who have been waiting eagerly since ‘Expert’ but win over even the steeliest heart that has not yet heard them.
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