The Beths: Straight Line Was a Lie (Flying Nun, digital outlets)

The Beths' trajectory from indie.rock favourites to mainstream acceptance – from student radio in 2018 to RadioNZ National with Jesse Mulligan in 2022 who described them as the station's favourite band -- could be a roadmap for young bands.

Their debut album Future Me Hate Me (2018) and its follow-up Jump Rope Gazers (2020)delivered exuberant, economic and immediately enjoyable pop-rock with burred edges and reference points in familiar powered-up New Wave and alt.rock.

However by their third album Expert in a Dying Field, (2022) singer Liz Stokes was writing clever, self-deprecating and slightly anxious lyrics and their musical palette was broadening incrementally through more subtle shades.

This fourth album finds them shifted once more.

Their alt.rock signature is intact on No Joy but with lyrics probing something outside of youthful excitement: “All my pleasures, guilty. Clean slate looking filthy. This year’s gonna kill me, gonna kill me” with a chorus of “no joy, no joy”.

The fiery Ark of the Covenant unleashes guitarist Jonathan Pearce for a rowdy crowd-pleaser and Metal is a likeable slice of Bangles-like jangle-pop with challenging lyrics: “I know I’m a collaboration. Bacteria, carbon and light. A florid orchestration, a recipe of fortune and time”.

But attention alights on the more arresting songs: Mother, Pray For Me is extraordinary, acoustic folk about a desperate search for connection with a parent and reaching across the divide of past hurts: “I would like to know you and I want you to know me. Do we still have time? Can we try?”

It'll be a tear-inducing show-stopper live.

Mother, Pray For Me

Elsewhere there's the slow, thoughtful build of Mosquitos where Stokes escapes into Nature for space and solace but also uses Auckland's January 2023 floods as a metaphor of sudden change.

Til My Heart Stops is equally restrained (more imagery from the natural world and yearning for the simple pleasure of wanting to ride a bike in the rain), Roundabout and the arrangement of the brooding Best Laid Plans benefit from their spacious settings.

Straight Line Was a Lie, if not as immediate in impact as its predecessors, is an album of breadth and depth revealing a more reflective and mature Beths.

As if anticipating what young bands could learn from them, they seem to be saying, this is how you grow with your changing self.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here