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The Beths know the futility of straight lines. This existential vertigo serves as the primary theme on the New Zealand indie heroes’ fourth album Straight Line Was A Lie (their first for new label ANTI-). 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 doesn’t always end with peace and acceptance. That the approach is simply continuing to try, to show up. “Linear progression is an illusion,” lead singer and songwriter Elizabeth Stokes says of the album. “What life really is is maintenance. And finding meaning in the maintenance.”
The path from The Beths’ critically celebrated and year-end-list-topping 2022 LP Expert In A Dying Field to Straight Line Was A Lie, written in Los Angeles and recorded in the band’s hometown of Auckland, was also 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.
The path from The Beths’ critically celebrated and year-end-list-topping 2022 LP Expert In A Dying Field to Straight Line Was A Lie, written in Los Angeles and recorded in the band’s hometown of Auckland, was also 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.
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