Expert in a Dying Field
The Beths’ third album finds the Aotearoa indie rockers tighter and brighter than ever, packing chiming melodies and big, buoyant choruses. Elizabeth Stokes’ poignant vocals and diaristic lyrics continue to translate everyday foibles into memorable asides (“Here I go again, mixing drinks and messages”), while lead guitarist Jonathan Pearce proves animated at every turn (see the wild splay of a solo capping off “Silence Is Golden”). For all its noisy freshness, *Expert in a Dying Field* also plays like a studied parallel to the classic power-pop songbook, dispensing sunny harmonies and sharp dynamic shifts. Recorded mostly in Pearce’s own studio, this outing sees all of the band’s strengths balanced across the board. That means Stokes’ witticisms enjoy just as much attention as the fuzzy push-and-pull of the music, alternately driving ahead and pulling back with increasing precision. Stokes may label herself an expert in a dying field when singing about love on the opening title track, but The Beths make whip-smart indie rock look like a flourishing profession indeed.
On The Beths’ new album Expert In A Dying Field, Elizabeth Stokes’ songwriting positions her somewhere between being a novelist and a documentarian. The songs collected here are autobiographical, but they’re also character sketches of relationships -- platonic, familial, romantic -- and more importantly, their aftermaths. The shapes and ghosts left in absences. The question that hangs in the air: what do you do with how intimately versed you’ve become in a person, once they’re gone from your life? The third LP from the New Zealand quartet houses 12 jewels of tight, guitar-heavy songs that worm their way into your head, an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz. With Expert, The Beths wanted to make an album meant to be experienced live, for both the listeners and themselves. They wanted it to be fun in spite of the prickling anxiety throughout the lyrics, the fear of change and struggle to cope. Most of Expert was recorded at guitarist Jonathan Pearce’s studio on Karangahape Road in Ta–maki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand) toward the end of 2021, until they were interrupted by a four-month national lockdown. They traded notes remotely for months, songwriting from afar and fleshing out the arrangements alone. The following February The Beths left the country to tour across the US, and simultaneously finish mixing the album on the road, culminating in a chaotic three-day studio mad-dash in Los Angeles. There, Expert finally became the record they were hearing in their heads. The album’s title track “Expert In A Dying Field” introduces the thesis for the record: “How does it feel to be an expert in a dying field? How do you know it’s over when you can’t let go?” Stokes asks. “Love is learned over time ‘til you’re an expert in a dying field.” The rest is a capsule of The Beths’ most electrifying and exciting output, a sonic spectrum: “Silence is Golden,” with its propulsive drum line and stop-start staccato of a guitar line winding up and down, is one of the band’s sharpest and most driving. “Knees Deep” was written last minute, but yields one of the best guitar lines on Expert. Stokes strings it all together through her singular songwriting lens, earnest and selfeffacing, zeroing in on the granules of doubt and how they snowball. Did I do the wrong thing? Or did you? That insecurity and thoughtfulness, translated into universality and understanding, has been the guiding light of The Beths’ output since 2016. In the face of pain, there’s no dwelling on internal anguish -- instead, through The Beths’ music, our shortcomings are met with acceptance. And Expert In A Dying Field is the most tactile that tenderness has been.
The third album from the New Zealand quartet blends openhearted lyrics about post-breakup regret with a sugar-rush immediacy and a craftsman-like attention to detail.
Expert In A Dying Field is The Beths turning the sound of anxiety and self doubt into joyous indie power-pop
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The New Zealand four-piece remain among the most dependable voices in indie rock on their sharp third LP.
After quickly building a fan base in New Zealand and Australia with their live shows, Auckland's the Beths burst onto the broader indie scene with an infectious, hook-crammed debut, 2018's Future Me Hates Me.
Celebrated New Zealand crew return with a solid collection of bittersweet power-pop gems for anyone with half a heart.
New albums from the Beths are not capital "E" events. There are no new eras declared, no wiping of social media accounts, no new visual aest...
The Beths have been making waves in their native New Zealand for a while now but it seems that their music is further gaining a lot of momentum across the world.
Coming after The Beths’ raw and energetic 2018 debut (Future Me Hates Me), the band’s sophomore album, 2020’s Jump Rope Gazers, was a more polished, introspective, and melancholic affair.
Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths: the New Zealand group's best work yet. Whip-smart indie pop from an admirably introspective band
The Beths’s third album, ‘Expert in a Dying Field,’ is replete with bristling guitar riffs and bright, infectious harmonies. Read our review.
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