The Beths - Straight Line Was A Lie

“On the Auckland indie rockers’ most incisive album, bulletproof hooks cloak gnarly emotional realities and cheerfulness always comes tinged with a creeping sadness.” – Pitchfork (Album Review: 7.5)

“Jangle rock magic.” — Rolling Stone

“[On ‘No Joy,’] Stokes deadpans over playful post-punk guitars. SSRIs can take away emotions, sure, but it can’t take away bangers.” – Stereogum

“Liz Stokes is a master of the crunchy, three-minute earworm that smooshes happy and sad together into a delicious pop PB&J.” – Brooklyn Vegan

The path from The Beths’ 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 she’d recorded on her phone. She’d recently started taking an SSRI, which on one hand made her feel like she could “fix” everything broken in her life, from her mental and physical health to fraught family dynamics. At the same time, writing wasn’t coming as easily as it had before.

With Straight Line Was A Lie, Stokes and Pearce broke down the typical Beths writing process, opening themselves up to a wave of creative input, with Stokes’ free-flowing writing routine proving to be therapeutic. Already a celebrated lyricist, Stokes has long impressed fans and critics with catchy, instant-classic turns of phrase that capture the personal and ladder up to the universal. But Stokes’ 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.

Earlier this year, The Beths announced a world tour across North America, the UK and Europe this fall. They’ll headline some of their biggest venues to date, including The Wiltern in Los Angeles, The Fillmore in San Francisco, The Salt Shed in Chicago, Brooklyn Paramount in New York City, Union Transfer in Philadelphia, 9:30 Club in Washington, DC and more. A full list of dates is HERE, contact us with any requests!