Latest news with #TheBeths
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
10 new albums to listen to in August
This August, indie releases are set to dominate, with one notable exception: Sabrina Carpenter's Man's Best Friend, which comes in just under the wire on August 29. New albums from Blood Orange, Nourished By Time, No Joy, Field Medic, and The Beths are late-summer highlights, and fresh music from The Hives is always a reason to celebrate. Here are the albums we're looking forward to this month. More from A.V. Club 10 new albums to listen to in August The U.K. Office and more British faves cross the pond to HBO Max for a limited time Chance The Rapper takes it back to 2016 with new album announcement Solve the daily Crossword
RNZ News
25-06-2025
- 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
24-06-2025
- 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.
Scoop
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Aotearoa's Pickle Darling Shares New Single On U.S. Label Father/Daughter Records
There's always been something ineffably tender about Pickle Darling 's music - an off-kilter ache, a half-buried memory, a melody that insists on being felt before it can be understood. With ' Massive Everything,' their first original music since a gorgeously unguarded Postal Service cover alongside The Beths in 2023, the Ōtautahi/Christchurch-based songwriter takes a step into full-blown pop maximalism — or at least their version of it. " Maybe the first kind of 'pop' song I've ever made. And I think the most lyrically direct too, there's no poetry or cleverness to it, I felt strongly about clear communication this time. I love Robyn, Ray of Light-era Madonna, Cher, Donna Lewis, I love those kinds of 'empathetic' pop songs that feel like a hug from a friend." And it shows. 'Massive Everything' pulses with a bright, synthetic heart through lush synth beds and flickers of drum machine melancholy. It's outwardly buoyant, but under the surface, there's something deeply human. ' Everyone has their own invisible pains that are unexplainable, and this is a love song that tries to include as much of that as possible,' Lukas reflects. It's a kind of radical intimacy: a love song not in spite of those interior shadows, but because of them. 'Massive Everything' marks the beginning of a new chapter for Pickle Darling, one that reaches toward bigness without losing the cracked, glinting beauty of their past work. The new single, 'Massive Everything' follows the playful and innovative celebration of indie music and digital creativity, from last month, NZ Music Month, when Pickle Darling (Lukas Mayo) along with visual artist Christiane Shortal released "Pickle Darling: The Game", an immersive online experience. The charming, nostalgia-driven game invites players to join Pickle Darling on a whimsical quest: tracking down their mysteriously lost album. Blending Mayo's quirky musical sensibilities with Shortal's distinctive visual artistry, "Pickle Darling: The Game" offers fans a delightful glimpse into the trials, tribulations, and sheer magic behind an indie album release. The game features exclusive 8-bit renditions of beloved Pickle Darling tracks, including fan favourites "Bicycle Weather," "King Of Joy," and "Invercargill Angel". These uniquely reimagined versions were produced specifically for the game and will soon be available on TikTok and Instagram, encouraging fans to soundtrack their own online creations. Play the game here:
The Spinoff
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The emergency mobile alert sound, reviewed
Another test, another shocking reminder of the emergency alert noise. We asked some experts to describe that indescribable sound. First published in 2023 shortly after yet another emergency alert. Over the past few days, weeks, months, years, people across the country have had their lives periodically punctuated by a loud warning screech emitting from their phone. Some of these have been warning of unusually heavy rain, others of a nationwide lockdown, most recently of Cyclone Gabrielle. It's a dreaded sound that many will be increasingly (and unfortunately) familiar with – but how exactly would you describe it? The start of the dial-up tone? The traffic lights at the start of Crash Team Racing? Or like the gates of hell opening up for us once more? We asked some of our finest writers, musicians and thinkers to weigh in. Sharon Lam, Writer It 100% sounds like a robot Pingu going NOOT NOOT, right? With glowing red eyes? Surely everyone will also say this? Joanna Cho, Author I'm with my nieces in Auckland and I said 'the alarm sounds like Pingu' and they said 'what's that' and I put on Pingu on YouTube and now they're lying around my work computer watching Pingu so I can't work, fine by me. The Beths, Band The notes that make the tone wouldn't be out of place in a song like Silence Is Golden, but if we did that, we'd have a count in! No count in is just wrong. It's also twisted how it calls and answers to itself when you're in a group of people. It's a bit of a musical cheat code – it is 'harmony', but most harmony suggests a place it wants to go, or at least a place it came from – that's what brainy musicians call 'function'. The emergency tone screams for attention, but doesn't really suggest any movement. Ironically, this makes it musically 'non-functional'. Haz Beats, Producer A Tsunami siren. The big panic apocalypse end of the world type lol. Definitely a siren. Jess Molina, Writer Sounds like I'm about to panic over not panic-buying toilet paper Toby Morris, Illustrator I remember reading about the concept of 'the brown noise' in WWII, where they researched finding a perfect note that'd loosen any bowels. I feel like the emergency noise has gotten close to that, combined with the visual equivalent – when they researched the most unpleasant possible colour which they used for non-labelled cigarette packaging. It's giving uncomfortable meets unnatural meets poo, basically. Aaron Yap, Psychic Glands DJ It sounds like a chintzy 1950s sci-fi movie robot vaporising you with its laser beam. Alan Holt, International Manager at New Zealand Music Commission Off the top of my head it reminds me of a quite a few things – side two of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music around the 10 minute mark, a less musical interpretation of 'Don't Take' from Sachiko M's Sine Wave Solo album and a less funky take on 'Sonata Number 5 (the 'Detroit Sonata')' from Bruce Russell's album Circuits of Omission : Sonaten für synthetisierten Klang (Opus 60). Nick Ascroft, Poet This sounds like a mouse ambulance reversing. As it should. Jane Yee, Treasure Island Star It sounds like all my nightmares coming true in one ear piercing screech. I physically left the couch vertically skywards when yesterday's one arrived. Usually have my phone on silent but I had been playing League of Legends Wild Rift on my phone which requires sound on and forgot to switch it back. I will never be the same again. Britt Mann, PR Maven The sound is getting familiar to me now. On Sunday it emanated separately and all at once from various corners of the house. The flatmate, the cat and I met each other's gaze in an instant. 'Was that…?' 'Yeah.' Severe, significant event. Red Alert Level Gabrielle. 'Top up?' She cracked the magnum of red we'd opened to mark the Beginning of the End of Days. Janaye Henry, Comedian If I was to Shazam that sound I reckon it would say Skrillex, Bangarang. Reuben Jelleyman, Acoustician The sound itself is basically the same as a phone dial tone but the emergency mobile alert is higher and richer in resonant sideband frequencies which makes the sound harsher. You also have the two beeps, which gets your attention. One beep would be easy to ignore. From my perspective the sound is strong enough to get your attention, but it's not meant to be harsh, it's to provoke fear. I would say it's easy to associate feelings with sound, that's normal. When we hear the alarm, it reminds us of the last time we were anticipating a tsunami or a storm and that puts us on edge. Sanjay Patel, Comedian It sounds like the government is alerting you to the fact that they have now finally discovered the most sordid thing you have searched for on the internet. Imogen Taylor, Painter If the alert was a painting it would probably be a whole exhibition of paintings and that exhibition would be in some art museum in some country quite far away that you'd been really excited about travelling to but when you got there you realised you got the museum dates mixed up and instead of there being a Georgia O'Keeffe retrospective on there was a fucking Banksy retrospective on and then to top it off you paid for the tickets which were horrendously expensive and went inside to look at the bullshit paintings but then realised whatever you had for lunch from that place on the corner outside the museum before you went in wasn't sitting right in your gut and you immediately need to find the bathroom somewhere. Rose Hoare, Writer It sounds antique to me. Like if they had emergency mobile alerts on Bridgerton, that's what they'd sound like. It sounds like a boomer ringtone to me. The kind that would be mildly irritating in an office environment. You learn to block it over time, but it will always give you an inner eye roll and feeling of superiority. It doesn't exactly evoke authority. Or urgency for that matter.
