Daniel Brabban

Iโ€™m a journalist from the North East currently exiled in Leeds. You can find me playing bass in the band โ€˜Hardwareโ€™ and having pints at the brude. Haโ€™way the Lads.

The Beths’ latest album will be releasing 29th August with new single ‘No Joy‘ out now

New Zealand Quartet The Beths have announced their new album โ€˜Straight Line Was a Lieโ€™ is set to be released on August 29th via label โ€˜ANTI-โ€™. The album follows 2022โ€™s critically acclaimed album โ€˜Expert in a Dying Fieldโ€™. Lead singer Elizabeth Stokes says the lengthy gap between albums is due to her struggles with writerโ€™s block, brought about by a new regimen of SSRIs.

Stokes explains this difficulty saying, โ€œI was kind of dealing with a new brain, and I feel like I write very instinctually. It was kind of like my instincts were just a little different, they weren’t as panicky.โ€

This new reality is reflected in new single โ€˜No Joyโ€™ out now, with its repeated chorus refrain of โ€˜No Joyโ€™ expressing the emotional numbness brought on by antidepressants, balanced by The Beths‘ usual style of insightful slacker pop.

The albumโ€™s unconventional writing process is reflected in its diverse range of influences, with Stokes and guitarist Jonathan Pearce reading Stephen Kingโ€™s classic โ€˜On Writingโ€™, re-visiting Akira Kurosawa Criterion classics as well as listening to Drive-By Truckers, The Go-Goโ€™s and Olivia Rogrigo. This allowed Stokesโ€™ to deconstruct her own writing style resulting in what The Beths describe as their โ€œmost sharply observant, truthful, and poeticโ€ album to date.

You can catch The Beths on tour across the UK and Ireland this September in support of โ€˜Straight Line Was a Lieโ€™.

Listen to ‘No Joy‘ here:


Catch The Beths at the following:

Wed. Sept 17th โ€“ Dublin, IE @ Button Factory
Thu. Sept 18th โ€“ Dublin, IE @ Button Factory [SOLD OUT]
Sat. Sept 20th โ€“ Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
Sun. Sept 21st โ€“ Glasgow, UK @ SWG3 TV Studio
Mon. Sept 22nd โ€“ Leeds, UK @ Project House
Wed. Sept 24th โ€“ Bristol, UK @ O2 Academy
Thu. Sept 25th โ€“ Birmingham, UK @ XOYO
Fri. Sept 26th โ€“ London, UK @ Roundhouse
Sat. Sept 27th โ€“ Brighton, UK @ CHALK



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