Indie Stores Exclusive Beam Of Light Colour

Tracklist:

1. I’m Not Getting Excited
2. Dying to Believe
3. Jump Rope Gazers
4. Acrid
5. Do You Want Me Now
6. Out of Sight
7. Don’t Go Away
8. Mars, the God of War
9. You Are a Beam of Light
10. Just Shy of Sure

Everything changed for The Beths when they released their debut album, Future Me Hates Me, in 2018. The indie rock band had long been nurtured within Auckland, New Zealands tight-knit music scene, working full-^me during the day and playing music with friends aler hours. Full of uptempo pop rock songs with bright, indelible hooks, the LP garnered them critical acclaim from outlets like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and they set out for their first string of shows overseas. They quit their jobs, said goodbye to their home town, and devoted themselves entirely to performing across North America and Europe. They found themselves playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie. Almost instantly, The Beths turned from a passion project into a full-time career in music.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Elizabeth Stokes worked on what would become The Beths second LP, Jump Rope Gazers, in between these intense periods of touring. Like the groups earlier music, the album tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situation’s with some of your best friends. Stokess writing on Jump Rope Gazers grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home.

“If you’re at a certain age, all your friends scatter to the four winds, Stokes says. We did the same thing. When you’re home, you miss everybody, and when you’re away, you miss everybody. We were just missing people all the ^me. With songs like the rambunctious Dying To Believe and the tender, shoegazey Out of Sight, The Beths reckon with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over ^me. People who love each other inevitably fail each other. Im sorry for the way that I cant hold conversa^ons/Theyre such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of, Stokes sings on Dying to Believe. The best way to repair that failure, in The Beths view, is with abundant and uncondi^onal love, no matter how far it has to travel. On Out of Sight, she pledges devotion to a dearly missed friend: If your world collapses/Ill be down in the rubble/Id build you another, she sings.

It was a rough year in general, and I found myself saying the words, ‘wish you were here, wish I was there, over and over again, she says of the ^me period in which the album was written. Touring far from home, The Beths commiged themselves to taking care of each other as they were trying at the same ^me to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. They encouraged each other to communicate whenever things got hard, and to pay forward acts of kindness whenever they could.

That care and attention shines through on Jump Rope Gazers, where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. Their most emotive and heartfelt work to date, Jump Rope Gazers stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it — a sentiment we need now more than ever.