Jump Rope Gazers
Everything changed for The Beths when they released their debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealand’s tight-knit music scene, working full-time during the day and playing music with friends after hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their hometown, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music. Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths’ second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the group’s earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends. Stokes’s writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home. "If you're at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds,” Stokes says. “We did the same thing. When you're home, you miss everybody, and when you're away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the time.” With songs like the rambunctious “Dying To Believe” and the tender, shoegazey “Out of Sight,” The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations/They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings on “Dying to Believe.” The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths’ view, is with abundant and unconditional love, no matter how far it has to travel. On “Out of Sight,” she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: “If your world collapses/I’ll be down in the rubble/I’d build you another,” she sings. “It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, 'wish you were here, wish I was there,’ over and over again,” she says of the time period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths committed themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same time to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could. That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it--a sentiment we need now more than ever.
On their second LP, the New Zealand indie rockers downshift into a muted, sleeker sound, sacrificing some of the energy that made their debut special.
New Zealand four-piece The Beths have returned with their second album 'Jump Rope Gazers', which sees the band going in a different direction to their debut
“I’m not getting excited,” Elizabeth Stokes vows on the opening track to the Beths’ new album, Jump Rope Gazers.
Following the success of their infectious debut album, 2018's Future Me Hates Me, New Zealand indie rockers the Beths found themselves trading their day jobs and the close-knit Auckland music scene for 18 months of near-constant touring.
It's been a formative and fruitful couple of years for New Zealand indie rockers the Beths. Plucked from the cozy Auckland indie scene for a...
There’s little to suggest that The Beths found following up to their acclaimed breakthrough debut album Future Me Hates a daunting proposition. Indeed their second full-length release,
'Jump Rope Gazers', the latest album from New Zealand-based outfit The Beths, has quite a lot going on. Over its ten tracks that clock in just shy
New Zealand indie-pop band The Beths return with another album of succinct, compulsive, effortlessly hook-filled songwriting
It feels like several lifetimes ago that I was able to see live music. In reality, it's only been a little over four months
Jump Rope Gazers by The Beths album review by Adam Fink. The band's new full-length is now available via Car Park Records