In a little corner of the world known as New Zealand, The Beths, a four-piece indie rock group consisting of Elizabeth Stokes, Jonathan Pearce, Benjamin Sinclair and Tristan Deck have been releasing some of the best music of the past decade. Mixing often melancholic lyrics with pop-rock beats and guitar riffs, The Beths are an endlessly listenable band with a lyrical depth that is often missing in other artists of their genre.
The vocal style of Stokes, lead singer and guitarist, is at the core of the band’s sound. It’s not a voice that you can expect to hear loudly belting out notes, but its constant low-key and soothing resonance helps bring the listener into the unique soundscape the band sets out to create. This is backed up by harmonies from the rest of the group that add much-needed depth to the band’s songs.
To date, The Beths have released three albums: “Future Me Hates Me” (2018), “Jump Rope Gazers” (2020) and “Expert in a Dying Field” (2022), the last of which simultaneously feels modern and harkens back to certain power-pop motifs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s an album chock-full of catchy tunes and short in-your-face guitar solos, all balanced out by the signature degree of consideration The Beths bring to their lyrics.
The deluxe edition of “Expert in a Dying Field,” released Sept. 15, contains the entirety of the previous release while also adding acoustic versions of two tracks and the demos of four, including a previously unreleased tune. On top of that, the singles “A Real Thing” and “Watching the Credits” are added to the album to round out its tracklist to something a little fuller than the original version.
The Beths are not so impressive in the subjects they cover as much as they are in the way they cover them. Through poignant metaphors and clever turns of phrase, The Beths are able to make music about such frequently utilized topics as losing relationships and anxiety without feeling stale.
In the album’s title track, they attribute the act of losing a friend to being an “expert in a dying field,” where you know so much about a person but no longer have any place to apply that knowledge. Stokes sings of this feeling: “And I can close the door on us/ But the room still exists/ And I know you’re in it.”
Yet in other songs, they seem to be saying that sometimes it is best to move on from past negative experiences. In the opening lines of “Best Left,” Stokes sings, “Pulling it up/ From the wet ground/ I couldn't stop/ Had to find out/ Some things are best left to rot.” The ability to extract such an emotional message out of the simple, natural process of uprooting plants from the earth is a clear example of the band’s lyrical capabilities.
This is further shown in the album’s best track, “Knees Deep,” in which Stokes sings about the envy she feels toward water’s resilience and ability to move freely: “I want to bend the way it bends/ You slice like a knife through the surface/ But what a thrill to see it mend.”
But the song moves on to discuss Stokes’s inability to become one with the water as she sings, “The shame, I wish that I was/ Bravе enough to dive in/ But I nevеr have been and never will be.”
The album constantly hovers around these topics, utilizing new and intriguing metaphors for listeners to explore in each song. From the very touching love song “Your Side” to the more upbeat song about finding and navigating new love “When You Know You Know,” don’t expect to go on a far-reaching journey where each song says something totally different from the last. Rather, expect to linger in a world of love, loss and fear and explore those feelings in all their various facets.
The new additions in the album’s deluxe edition don’t so much recontextualize it as they show the extent of the band’s abilities and provide a peek behind their creative process. The acoustic renditions of “I Told You That I Was Afraid” and “When You Know You Know” are welcomed additions due to their ability to show the pure songwriting prowess of the group. A lone acoustic guitar and Stokes’s natural voice show their music in its purest form, which unearths a certain beauty found underneath these songs.
“Keep The Distance - Demo” is the only demo track to not include an official release. While it is not quite a complete song, its inclusion of a digital drum loop, if even just a stand-in for the missing standard drum kit, shows the group’s potential for exploring more experimental, funky sounds in the future.
While a fan of The Beths doesn’t learn anything particularly new in the deluxe edition of “Expert in a Dying Field,” new versions of already-released songs provide a previously untapped lens through which to consider their music. And if you haven’t heard any of their songs before, there has never been a more complete package to explore the works of a band that deserves all the love it can get.
Finn Kirkpatrick is the senior editor of multimedia of the Brown Daily Herald's 134th editorial board. He is a junior from Los Angeles, California studying Comparative Literature and East Asian Studies. He was previously an Arts & Culture editor and has a passion for Tetris and Mario Kart.
