Latest news with #NoJoy
RNZ News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Music Critic: Zac Arnold on The Beths and Frances Grass
This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions. Photo: Supplied / Frances Carter Our music critic Zac Arnold takes a look at the latest single from local indie rockers The Beths. It's called No Joy and is out today, as is the news that their new album "Straight Line Was a Lie" will be released in August. After a five-year hiatus from performing while overseas, Frances Grass's debut single Free is out, Zac and Jesse have a listen.
Scoop
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scoop
The Beths Announce New Album 'Straight Line Was A Lie' & Release New Single 'No Joy'
The Beths — the Auckland based quartet of vocalist Elizabeth Stokes, guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and drummer Tristan Deck — announce their new album, Straight Line Was A Lie —their first for their new label ANTI —out August 29th, and share the new single/video, 'No Joy.' The Beths know the futility of straight lines. Existential vertigo serves as the primary theme on the indie heroes' fourth album. 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,' Stokes explains. 'What life really is is maintenance. But you can find meaning in the maintenance.' 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. ' I was kind of dealing with a new brain, and I feel like I write very instinctually,' she says. ' It was kind of like my instincts were just a little different, they weren't as panicky.' While Stokes felt a huge relief from taking an SSRI, she articulates the emotional trade-offs on today's single, 'No Joy,' which thunders in with Deck's vigorous percussion and drops another classic Beths soundbite: 'This year's gonna kill me/ Gonna kill me.' Ironically, though, the stress Stokes sings about can't touch her, thanks to her pharmaceutical regimen. She wants the feeling back. " It's about anhedonia, which, paradoxically, was there both in the worst parts of depression, and then also when I was feeling pretty numb on my SSRI,' Stokes says. ' It wasn't that I was sad, I was feeling pretty good. It was just that I didn't like the things that I liked. I wasn't getting joy from them. It's very literal.' In writing Straight Line Was A Lie, Stokes and Pearce broke down the typical Beths writing process. For inspiration, they read Stephen King's On Writing, How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, and Working by Robert A. Caro. Liz broke out a Remington typewriter (a birthday gift from Beths bassist Benjamin Sinclair) every morning for a month, writing 10 pages' worth of material — mostly streams of consciousness. The resulting stack of paper was the primary fodder for an extended writing retreat to Los Angeles between tours, where Stokes and Pearce also leaned heavily into LA's singular creative atmosphere, went to shows, watched Criterion classics from Kurosawa, and listened to Drive-By Truckers, The Go-Go's, and Olivia Rodrigo. Opening themselves up to a wave of creative input, plus Stokes' free-flowing writing routine, proved therapeutic. ' Writing so much down forced me to look at stuff that I didn't want to look at,' Stokes says. ' In the past, in my memories. Things I normally don't like to think about or I'm scared to revisit, I'm putting them down on paper and thinking about them, addressing them.' Already a celebrated lyricist, Stokes has long impressed fans and critics with wryly knowing song titles like 'Future Me Hates Me' and 'Expert In A Dying Field' — 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. Following Liz Stokes's recent, sold–out solo show at Largo in Los Angeles with special guests Roz Hernandez, Courtney Barnett and Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords), 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 below, and tickets are now available here.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Beths Announce New Album, Share Video for New Song: Watch
All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by Pitchfork editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Condé Nast may earn an affiliate commission. The Beths, photo by Frances Carter New Zealand indie-rockers the Beths have announced their first new album in three years. Straight Line Was a Lie is out August 29 via Anti-, marking their debut on the label. The band has also shared the new song 'No Joy,' which singer Elizabeth Stokes wrote when trying to process the newfound benefits and struggles of taking an SSRI for her health. Watch the 'No Joy' video below. '['No Joy'] is about anhedonia, which, paradoxically, was there both in the worst parts of depression, and then also when I was feeling pretty numb on my SSRI,' Stokes explained. 'It wasn't that I was sad, I was feeling pretty good. It was just that I didn't like the things that I liked. I wasn't getting joy from them. It's very literal.' Straight Line Was a Lie was written in Los Angeles and recorded in the Beths' hometown of Auckland, New Zealand. The follow-up to their 2022 full-length, Expert in a Dying Field, gets its album title from the illusion of linear progression and how, according to Stokes, life is about finding meaning in the maintenance. As previously announced, the Beths are going on a huge headlining tour later this year, with dates scheduled across the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and the United States. Joining them as openers on select concerts are Illuminati Hotties, Squirrel Flower, Bret McKenzie, Phoebe Rings, and Dateline. Read about Expert in a Dying Field at No. 47 in 'The 50 Best Albums of 2022.' $27.00, Rough Trade Straight Line Was a Lie: 01 Straight Line Was a Lie 02 Mosquitoes 03 No Joy 04 Metal 05 Mother, Pray for Me 06 Til My Heart Stops 07 Take 08 Roundabout 09 Ark of the Covenant 10 Best Laid Plans Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
