The Beths – Straight Line Was A Lie | Album Review

Anti

It’s no secret, at least to The Beths, that human experience isn’t linear. The New Zealand pop rockers are far from the first to make this observation: Buddhist philosophy talks about Samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and existence that’s fueled by desire. Also called “the wheel of suffering,” Samsara can theoretically be escaped. But don’t ask me, or The Beths, how!

The band’s fourth album, Straight Line Was A Lie, kicks off with the title track, a treatise that hinges on the admission, “Guess I’ll take the long way / ‘Cause every way’s the long way.” Crunchy guitars circle around a verse and bridge; no chorus, just a recursive mantra. The fuzz gives way to sweetness on “Mosquitoes,” the second track, showcasing the soft side of frontwoman Elizabeth Stokes’ voice and songwriting. Throughout the song, she reflects vividly on a flood that wrecked her favorite local creek, grappling with impermanence and loss in the process. However, the reflective moment soon gives way to the up-tempo drums and thrumming bass of “No Joy,” a nod to The Beths’ power-pop past. On it goes throughout the track: fervor and tenderness, slow and fast, light and dark, back and forth, around and around. Indeed, as the album’s title forecasts, there is absolutely no straight line to be had here—and in light of life’s complexities, why would there be?

It’s not easy, making sense of *gestures to everything* All This. I won’t waste too many words talking about how much sorrow there is and how futile it all feels. Everyone I know—I am not even exaggerating—is reckoning with some kind of impossible misery right now, even if it’s just the struggle of surviving in this nightmare country. As for myself—well, I’m trying to move forward, to move on, but my life feels like it ended in 2023, and that cruel year just won’t loosen its awful grip on me. In fact, it’s lately felt like the more I thrash, the tighter it digs in. Perhaps if I knew how to loosen up, lighten up, I could shake off some of the pain. Three steps forward, two back, instead of the other way around. Salvation comes from letting go; otherwise, you’re stuck. Like the title track says: “I thought I was getting better, but I’m back to where I started / and the straight line was a circle, yeah the straight line was a lie.”

It makes sense that to be light and free, holding onto nothing and no one, would solve this problem of suffering. Like, I get why the Buddha said that. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t feel practical for me, a person who loves to get attached to everything.

In the album’s penultimate song, “Ark of the Covenant,” Stokes reckons with her dark side over brooding chords and an urgent drum tempo. “If I go digging, I’ll never stop,” she frets, worried that introspection will only lead to deeper misery. Is there a way to excavate these cursed artifacts safely, to sap them of their power? 

In the wake of The Beths’ beloved third album, Expert In a Dying Field, Stokes was prescribed antidepressants. She sought a way out of life’s difficulties; what happened instead was that she stalled out: unfulfilled and unable to write music as creatively as she had before. Slowly, though, she and her bandmates pushed through, and the process itself (and all its extrapolations into their personal relationships) became the subject matter. “So you need the metal in your blood,” a chorus of background vocals chants in the album’s second single, “Metal.” 

Stokes said she and the band intentionally avoided keyboards on Straight Line, a move that proves crucial to the album’s success. With her bubblegum voice and the band’s easygoing melodies, an Alvvays pastiche could have been an obvious route, but, as illustrated throughout the album, the band wasn’t interested in taking any shortcuts. Instead, they turn the dial up on bouncy bass riffs, lively drums, and chiming guitar tones that almost sound like a harpsichord on “Roundabout.” We get caught in these recursive riptides, yes, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t press forward, continue hacking through the jungle. 

Grit is the key to Straight Line Was A Lie. “I wanna ride my bike in the rain / I wanna fly my kite in the hurricane,” Stokes sings in the middle of the record on “Til My Heart Stops.” So you found yourself back where you started, or stuck in a rainstorm. What are you going to do about it? Perhaps for some of us, the response to suffering isn’t to fade out, but to double down. And that doesn’t have to mean the toxic kind of clinging that fuels Samsara; conversely, it might mean deciding what’s actually worth saving in the midst of life’s wreckage. 

Nowhere is this wreckage more evident than “Mother, Pray For Me,” a crushing choice for a pre-album single and my favorite song on the record. It’s not easy to sit with the paradox of a loving but difficult relationship, much less put it into words, but The Beths have done it here. “I cried the whole time writing it,” Stokes says, though in the spirit of the album, her persistence paid off. Softly underscored by organ chords, she offers up six verses and a bridge asking for the seemingly impossible. Despite the song’s title and mantra, it’s not her own salvation that she seeks. The bridge goes:

I called off the search
For evidence of an after
Decided I'm fine without
Forever is this right now
But one day, if you arrive
Just send me a small sign
I don't need the proof of place
Just tell me you got there safe

If there’s a heaven, a nirvana, it’s in what we share with those we love. It’s not a destination we arrive at; it’s a prayer we say for each other again and again. 

Before her final entreaty to her mother’s intercession, Stokes confesses, “I never know what to say anyway.” I disagree. I think she’s hit the nail on the head.