New Zealand indie rock band, The Beths, have been rising stars ever since the release of the brilliant 2022 record, Expert In a Dying Field. Known for their upbeat and vibrant melodies masking the existential dread and heartbreak every human goes with their colorful guitars and production, The Beths have tapped into a consistent and unique sound that brightens the dark moments of life.
The Beths had the honor of playing the 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and tore the roof of the Sonora tent during their Friday afternoon performance. Before taking to the stage, mxdwn was able to catch up with the group, Elizabeth Stokes (guitar/vocals), Jonathan Pearce (guitar), Benjamin Sinclair (bass), and Tristan Deck (drums) backstage and chat about playing at the festival, their process of writing unequivocally catchy melodies, and their thoughts on death.
mxdwn: How has your Coachella experience been so far?
Liz: It’s been good! It’s nice turning up to weekend two knowing where everything is, so it’s a little less scary.
mxdwn: Has there been any sets that you were able to catch that blew you away?
Liz: Last week, we played on Friday and then we got to walk around for the next two days and got to have a normal festival experience. I loved Tyler, the Creator’s set, it was maybe my favorite. And Ice Spice.
Tristan: I really enjoyed Doja Cat. I really enjoyed J Balvin.
Ben: Also just going around the festival realizing that there’s a reasonable expectation. An achievable level of what we have to do on stage at this festival.
mxdwn: Is it nice having an early time slot and being able to enjoy the rest of the fest the rest of the night?
Liz: Oh yeah. I mean, not that I wouldn’t have fun at 11 p.m., but it’s nice.
mxdwn: What’s the difference between playing a festival like Coachella compared to other festivals you’ve played at?
Liz: It’s quite well organized. Festivals, a lot of them, are the same but different. I guess the experience as an artist must be so different from a person coming. But this one’s been pretty seamless from the back. It’s been really well for us so far. The setting is awesome just looking around and seeing the mountains.
Ben: I really like that there’s really unexpected types of shows as well. Reconvening with friends afterwards, stumbling around to different shows.
mxdwn: What’s the difference between performing shows in New Zealand and performing here in the US? Are audiences different playing different places around the world?
Liz: Are they different? A little. But it can vary town to town, country to country. I feel like our sense of humor translates pretty well to America which it doesn’t always. You don’t know how your jokes are going to land in Germany. You just don’t know.
Ben: There’s so many variables for the show experience. I don’t know how much of the culture of a city or a place plays into it. Sometimes it’s a Tuesday night and people are going all out and it’s awesome. And sometimes it’s a Friday and people are really quiet. We love it all.
mxdwn: Has there been anywhere that has surprised you with what was happening in the audience?
Liz: Um, no. We just skip and turn out some pretty odd places. Denver is a crazy city for us. Minneapolis as well.
Ben: We played a great show in Kalamazoo last year.
Liz: Cleveland usually goes off.
Tristan: Sometimes people mosh which is a bit unexpected.
Liz: Often people watch (stares intensely). Like really watching.
Tristan: If you can go all the way from a watching audience to a super audience, it’s like…
Liz: A full spectrum.
mxdwn: You have been touring this amazing record Expert In a Dying Field as well as the deluxe edition for a little while now. How has playing these songs live been and do you feel like performing these songs has changed the meaning of them playing in different places around the world?
Liz: Yeah. The album’s been out for a while now, so the songs feel a lot more settled. Playing them live feels more comfortable, but they’re still hard. I still find new and exciting ways to make silly mistakes.
mxdwn: One thing that always keeps me coming back to your music is the sticky melodies whether it’s vocally or the guitar passages. Is that something that happens intentionally or do you think about how audiences will listen to your melodies and if it will resonate with them?
Liz: I feel like everybody is trying to make their music sticky. I’m trying to make melodies as catchy as possible. But it feels like half skill, half luck and magic or something. I feel like the catchiest things kinda fall out.
mxdwn: There’s no like formula that you follow that gets you to the place you need to go?
Liz: I think you can tell when you listen to your own song even if it’s the shittiest phone demo. If it’s sticky you’ll want to listen to that shitty phone demo again. Or you can listen to it twice and then you have it in your head for the rest of the day. It’s good having some space from it because if you give yourself enough space from writing it to forget it, and then you hear it again and you’re like, “Oh! That was good.”
mxdwn: Is there a lot of stuff that’s on the cutting room floor that you don’t eventually use?
Liz: There’s a real finessing process like if it’s working it stays, if it’s not working, can we make it work? And if we can’t make it work do we swap or change it out entirely or do we just leave it on the cutting room floor? I try to write enough songs that you don’t have to use everything. Then there isn’t as much pressure that every song has to be good because it can’t. Every song can’t be good.
mxdwn: Something I’ve noticed about the lyrical content in your work is it’s deeply rooted in sad feelings but the production is very colorful and upbeat. Is this dichotomy intentional or is it something that happens naturally when making music?
Liz: I think it makes sense to me. It’s like how some of the saddest people in the world are comedians and clowns. It feels like sadness and levity kind of go hand in hand, and if anything levity can make sadness feel more pronounced. It’s just the kind of music I want to listen to. I don’t really like listening to a sad Dirch all the time.
mxdwn: Yeah, you have to be in a certain mood for that kind of music. In a similar vein, I enjoy the album art. It’s very colorful, it’s very bright, it has a funny looking fish on the front. But I think it’s interesting that it has the word “dying” on it. So something I’m curious about is what is your perception of death and do you have an optimistic view of it or does it still hold a very heavy weight to it?
Liz: It’s a powerful word. I feel like I use it a lot, maybe overuse it. But I think it comes up again and again in pop music. It’s just a powerful color to work with. You know, love is death. Sleeping is death. Fighting is death. It’s just really versatile as a word.
mxdwn: It’s just easy for you to get in that headspace to write about it?
Liz: Yeah, but everybody’s thinking about dying. Surely.
mxdwn: Yeah, I mean, life is very finite.
Ben: It’s gravitas. Expert In a Retiring Field.
Liz: Expert In a Shrinking Field. Nearly doesn’t hold…
mxdwn: It doesn’t hit as hard.
Jon: There are fewer songs about dying in the 1950’s than there are in the 2020’s. I think there’s a phenomenon.
mxdwn: You guys are trying to bring back dying.
Ben: Back then it was too soon.
Jon: It was too soon, man. It’s in now.
Liz: I don’t know, people were talking about it in the 1950’s. There were a lot of pop songs.
(Slight pause)
mxdwn: I’m sorry to bring down the mood.
Liz: No, I’m thinking about making a playlist.
Jon: Songs about dying in the 1950’s.
mxdwn: Aside from music, what other sources of inspiration do you have for production or lyrical content?
Jon: Just try to listen to a lot of different things. The same things you listen to. I’m pretty inspired by the New Zealand cannon of alternative bands. People here know about Flying Nun record label. There’s another amazing record label called Lil’ Chief. Some pretty successful artists these days. I love pretty niche records like our friends’ bands. You end up part of a community and you get some talented friends and start bands.
Tristan: I really love the New Zealand comedy scene as well. It’s a lot of very joyous and really positive collaboration. I think it’s a really wonderful way to create.
mxdwn: Do you try to channel that comedic energy while you’re playing on stage?
Tristan: Yeah, I don’t try to be funny. I like the “yes, and” form. It’s a great way to keep things going.
mxdwn: Speaking of New Zealand, I know you were nominated for a few Aotearoa Music Awards. For those unaware, what’s the significance, as a New Zealand artist, being nominated for one of those awards?
Jon: It’s the Grammys of New Zealand!
mxdwn: So it’s a pretty big deal?
Jon: It’s huge!
Liz: Yeah, it’s a small country but it’s a big party.
mxdwn: Being nominated for these awards, does it put Expert In a Dying Field into a new perspective now that it’s being recognized with all these accolades?
Liz: Yeah, for sure. It’s nice to think that your music is part of a cannon, part of a lineage of music. We’re very proud of our music. There’s a long history of people doing it and artists that we really love have won awards that we have been nominated for previously. It feels gratifying to be a part of it. As silly as sometimes a music competition, as a concept can be, it feels nice.
mxdwn: It just feels good to be acknowledged that your art connected with people and someone thought it was deserving of a nomination.
Liz: Yeah, and it’s something that translates to people who aren’t deeply entrenched in alternative music or pop music as a hobby. It’s something you can show your auntie, “I got nominated for an award!” And they’re like, “I understand! Congratulations!”
mxdwn: With all these accolades, do you feel like there’s a specific characterization of the songs you make? Are there certain things that make a Beths song a Beths song?
Liz: Now that we made three albums, starting the fourth one, I feel pretty confident in us as a unit. Confident enough that we can try something quite different and as long as it’s still the four of us, it will still sound like the four of us.
Ben: I got distracted thinking about a joke to make on stage and I missed the question.
Jon: We’ve tried to expand what a Beths song is on the albums that we’ve made.
Liz: On the first album, it needs to be over 140 BPM, it needs to have fun vocal harmonies, it needs to be in a major key. Very few fancy harmonies, keeping it straight up, chords, rock music. That’s kind of the box that we built for ourselves at the start which was fun. When you have the ability to make absolutely anything with no limits…
Jon: As we do because we’re that talented.
Liz: It’s fun to only color with certain colors to see how creative you can get with those colors. I feel like as we keep going, we expand a little bit what colors we can use but still keep it spicy.
mxdwn: As you work on new music, are you continuing to expand on your sound or are you sticking to what you know, or are you experimenting with different things?
Liz: It’s all going to be Gregorian chants, low, minor, I don’t even know yet. I have to write the songs.
Tristan: It’s sort of a test kitchen. We got all our interests and pretty diverse things we’re all interested in, but we also talk about it a lot and I feel like there’s a little bit of push and pull in different genre areas. But we’re still so unified by the collective taste.
mxdwn: Is there a certain headspace you are in when working on this new music? Are you riding off the wave of the last album?
Liz: The new music is still currently unrealized. I don’t know what your guys’ vibe is.
Tristan: It’s building up like a dam.
Liz: I’m excited. We’ve been touring for a long time, and I love touring but I’m excited to dive 100% into just trying to write like a hundred songs and seeing what comes out.
Tristan: There’s so many points of feeling inspired over the last album cycle.
mxdwn: Are you going to have any down time after doing Coachella or is it straight to writing new music?
Liz: I’m going to go straight into writing.
Ben: I’m thinking about bass.
Tristan: Thinking about bass. That’s beautiful.
mxdwn: What’s the first thing you are going to do when you get back home?
Tristan: Pick up my cat.
Ben: Yeah, I’m going to rub my cat’s belly.
Jon: We get back at 5AM on Wednesday morning so I’ll try to go to bed.
mxdwn: Do you get really bad jet lag or are you used to it since you all travel so much?
Tristan: It takes like a good week to settle back in.
Liz: It gets worse every time.
mxdwn: New Zealand is on the other side of the world.
Ben: Yeah, the jet lag from the UK, twelve-hour difference, that’s gotta be the worst one for me. Like four or five hours, that’s way worse because it’s part way through a cycle and then you go to Australia and then the two-hour difference is the worst one.
Jon: It’s unnatural.
Liz: It literally takes off years of your life.
mxdwn: Hopefully you have many more years to come. Speaking of years, I know you are celebrating ten years of being in the band.
Liz: Oh yeah? We should do something.
Ben: Let’s find the first email of the first rehearsal.
mxdwn: Looking back on the past ten years, what have you learned from being in a band and what do you hope the next ten years of The Beths looks like?
Liz: Don’t get angry. (Laughs). I don’t know, what have you guys learned about being in a band?
Tristan: No cheese in the van.
Ben: Try to listen to what other people are doing.
Liz: Like on stage?
Ben: Yeah.
Liz: Generally?
Ben: Spiritually.
mxdwn: Do you take criticism very well then?
Ben: I’m actually not sure.
Liz: He’s never been criticized.
Ben: I like to think that I would but I’m not sure if that’s true at all. I’m open to the fact that I’m really bad at receiving criticism.
Liz: I really want to be good at it but it’s an act of, you have to fight. I’m defensive. There’s things that I find harder to be not defensive about. I feel very protective over lyrics in a way that’s goblinesque and I think I should try to get rid of that.
mxdwn: Are there future goals or dreams that you aspire for in the next coming years as a band?
Liz: I would like to make one million dollars.
mxdwn: That’s pretty big but it could happen.
Liz: Just one! Just one.
mxdwn: You just want to know what it tastes like.
Liz: I mean, that’d be great. What about you guys?
Jon: I don’t care about that.
Tristan: I care about it loads. I think it would make me really happy.
Jon: When we started doing this, we knew just enough to know what the next step was. And I think that’s enough. As long as you know where your next foot is going to fall that’s enough.
mxdwn: So you’re not thinking too far ahead, only somewhere you can see?
Jon: You have dreams, but it’s most important to focus on what our next step is.
Ben: Then we can branch out into other mediums.
Liz: We’re going to start a fashion label.
Ben: Cologne.
mxdwn: Like Tyler. He’s branched out to everything.
Liz: Oh, tell me about it. Very inspiring.
Ben: The Bethslogne. Try to say that, everyone.
mxdwn: It’s not as catchy as your songs but it’ll get there.
Liz: How do you find that criticism, Ben?
Ben: I’m fine with it. I’m taking it to heart and I’m going to keep improving.
Make sure to listen to the deluxe version of The Beths record, Expert In a Dying Field, available on all streaming platforms now. And check out their website for future tour dates, music releases, and much more!
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