I think one of the truest ways you can figure out whether a band is really your favorite band is if you have no context at all about the band, yet the band becomes your greatest obsession.
I definitely had this pure form of obsession for the indie rock band The Beths. I first heard about them in a podcast where Charli XCX interviewed Phoebe Bridgers about her favorite songs, and mentioned their song “Jump Rope Gazers.”
I gave it a listen and was immediately transported into a world where things are happy in a way that you don’t second-guess. I felt this floaty feeling that I fear sometimes, because you crash hard when it ends. But because it was controlled within the confines of a song, it felt safe, and there was just something about the band that felt safe.
The Beths formed in 2014 with four friends who met at the University of Auckland. The Beths’ lineup is led by Elizabeth Stokes, who serves as lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist. She is joined by Jonathan Pearce, lead guitarist and a key backing vocalist, Benjamin Sinclair on bass and backing vocals, and Tristan Deck, who contributed as a touring drummer beginning in 2018 before becoming a full-time member in 2019, on drums and backing vocals. They released Songs to critical acclaim, with outlets like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork singing their praises. They’ve opened for indie legends Death Cab for Cutie and The National and are now one of New Zealand’s most celebrated modern bands.
And, it’s worth mentioning that even after coming all this way, someone nearby me mentioned how the band themselves took care of all of their own gear onstage and wore staff shirts to blend in so that people wouldn’t notice.
I had the privilege of seeing their most recent show in Los Angeles at The Wiltern. They started off the night with the fan favorite “Straight Line Was a Lie,” as the crowd started holding hands and screaming in excitement. The band played with the tightness of a group with years of experience, as they then went into “No Joy,” “Silence Is Golden,” and their hit “Future Me Hates Me.” Stokes sang, “But there’s something about you / There’s something about you / There’s something about you / I wanna risk going through / Future heartbreak, future headaches / Wide-eyed nights spent lying awake / With future cold shakes from stupid mistakes / Future me hates me for.”
The highlight of the night for me was “Expert in a Dying Field,” where the audience all screamed in anticipation and sang along to every line, and, of course, “Jump Rope Gazers,” with the guitar lead played perfectly, and Stokes’ vocals were emotional in a way that felt like she just wrote it. “Oh I, I think I love you / And I think that I loved you the whole time / How could this happen? / We were jump rope gazers in the middle of the night.” I felt like I was being taken back into the nostalgia of falling in love with the song.
Then, as it ended, it felt like I did all over again.
