Cait Stoddard July 29th, 2025 - 12:13 PM
Today, The Beths has released the song, “Mother, Pray For Me,” which is the third single/video from their new upcoming album, Straight Line Was A Lie, that will be out on August 29, through ANTI-. Following last month’s single, “No Joy,” the group‘s new ditty is stripped-down and intensely personal. With over plaintive finger-picked guitar, Elizabeth Stokes’ voice is childlike in its wistful plea for connection,
Here, Stokes grapples with the lives her parents have led, their mortality and how to see them as people who did their best, even when it might not have felt like enough. “I cried the whole time writing it,” Stokes reflects. “It’s not really about my mother, it’s about me and what I hope our relationship is, what I think it is, what it maybe actually is, and what I can or can’t expect out of it.”
Stokes adds: “My mother is a first gen Indonesian immigrant, and very Catholic. I was born in Jakarta and we moved to Auckland when I was four. I think this song is me trying to understand my relationship with my mum and her relationship to her faith and with her own mother. It was hard to write. We came up with a full band arrangement for the song, but in the end it seemed to feel the clearest with just me and the guitar. And a bit of organ.”
