The Beths Sign To Anti- & Release New Single/Video ‘Metal’
The Beths – the Auckland based quartet of vocalist Elizabeth Stokes, guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and drummer Tristan Deck – announce signing to LA based record label Anti- and release the new single/video, Metal. Metal is the first taste of new music from the band since the release of 2023’s Expert In A Dying Field (Deluxe), the expanded version of their #1 2022 album.
Following Liz Stokes’s recent, sold–out solo show at Largo in Los Angeles with special guests Courtney Barnett and Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords), The Beths announce a tour across North America, the UK and Europe for the northern hemisphere fall. The band returns to the U.S. for the first time since playing Coachella, Bonnaroo and Newport Folk Festival, and supporting The National, Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service in 2023-2024. They’ll headline some of their biggest venues to date including The Wiltern in Los Angeles, The Fillmore in San Francisco, The Salt Shed in Chicago, Brooklyn Paramount in New York City, Union Transfer in Philadelphia, 9:30 Club in Washington, DC and more. Tickets go on sale Fri. May 2 (US) at 10am local and are available here.
Today’s single Metal was born out of a time of rigorous touring, mental health struggles, and several diagnoses for Stokes. “In some ways Metal is a song about being alive and existing in a human body,” she explains. “That is something I have been acutely aware of in the last few years, where I have been on what one might call a ‘health journey’. For parts of the last few years, I kind of felt like my body was a vehicle that had carried me pretty well thus far but was breaking down, something I had little to no control over. All of the steps in the Rube Goldberg machine of life are so unlikely, and yet here we are in it. I have a hunger and a curiosity for learning about the world around me, and for learning about myself. And despite all the ways that my body feels like a broken machine, I still marvel at the complexity of such a machine.”
“I can hold that knowledge in one hand, and yet with the other hand I can point to my reflection and just be like ‘you are shit’. Or ‘ugly’. Or ‘worthless’. I can reliably respond to any suggestion that I might be able to achieve any small thing with ‘no’. And these are variations of the ‘short word’ referenced in the song.”
Sonically, the track sees The Beths fully embracing jangle rock. Stokes says, “There was a propulsion to the acoustic strumming pattern on the original demo. Tristan’s drums meet that feeling so perfectly, the feeling of a train pushing up the tracks. Jonathan got to play his Burns 12 string guitar as sparkly as he wanted, and Ben as usual can’t be contained to the lower register. I think we ended up with an arrangement that embodies the frenetic intricacy of an engine in action. There’s a lot going on, until there isn’t.”
The accompanying video, shot by long time collaborators Sports Team (Annabel Kean and Callum Devlin) was shot on a farm in Leigh and sees The Beths donning wet weather gear as they forage for metal.
