New Zealand indie-rockers the Beths have announced their first new album in three years. Straight Line Was a Lie is out August 29 via Anti-, marking their debut on the label. The band has also shared the new song “No Joy,” which singer Elizabeth Stokes wrote when trying to process the newfound benefits and struggles of taking an SSRI for her health. Watch the “No Joy” video below.
“[‘No Joy’] is about anhedonia, which, paradoxically, was there both in the worst parts of depression, and then also when I was feeling pretty numb on my SSRI,” Stokes explained. “It wasn’t that I was sad, I was feeling pretty good. It was just that I didn’t like the things that I liked. I wasn’t getting joy from them. It’s very literal.”
Straight Line Was a Lie was written in Los Angeles and recorded in the Beths’ hometown of Auckland, New Zealand. The follow-up to their 2022 full-length, Expert in a Dying Field, gets its album title from the illusion of linear progression and how, according to Stokes, life is about finding meaning in the maintenance.
As previously announced, the Beths are going on a huge headlining tour later this year, with dates scheduled across the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and the United States. Joining them as openers on select concerts are Illuminati Hotties, Squirrel Flower, Bret McKenzie, Phoebe Rings, and Dateline.
Read about Expert in a Dying Field at No. 47 in “The 50 Best Albums of 2022.”
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Straight Line Was a Lie:
01 Straight Line Was a Lie
02 Mosquitoes
03 No Joy
04 Metal
05 Mother, Pray for Me
06 Til My Heart Stops
07 Take
08 Roundabout
09 Ark of the Covenant
10 Best Laid Plans
