The Beths Announce New Album, Hear: “No Joy”
Straight Line Was A Lie is out 8/29 via ANTI-.
Photo by Frances Carter
New Zealand indie rockers The Beths have shared news of their fourth studio album. Straight Line Was a Lie, out 8/29, follows up their breakout LP Expert In a Dying Field (#14 on our Best Albums of 2022 list). It’s their first record with their new label home ANTI- (MJ Lenderman, Waxahatchee) and, alongside the announcement comes “No Joy,” a punchy, guitar-forward track about feeling nothing at all.
The concept behind Straight Line Was a Lie is born out of a similar “healing isn’t linear” ethos; the fact that self-improvement and self-work is a constant cycle, rather than something with a start and an end. The album came out of the specific trouble bandleader Elizabeth Stokes was having trying to write new songs post-Expert after starting SSRIs. She and guitarist Jonathan Pearce altered their approach, working through a stream-of-consciousness writing that allowed Stokes to more directly face things she’d prefer to ignore.
