“Straight Line Was a Lie,” the fourth album from The Beths , a new Zealand power pop band, is influenced by an autoimmune disorder diagnosis that lead singer Liz Stokes received recently and the medication-influenced change in her brain chemistry that affected her ability to write songs as she had done before.
Since their beginning the band has had a “no synthesizers” rule when recording, sticking mostly to guitar bass and drums with a little keyboard work added to the mix. They keep to that way of thinking on the new album but many of the songs are more nuanced than past albums, bringing about a kind of whiplash effect between the straight up rockers and more stark, raw songs.
Talking about how her medication affected her writing process, Stokes says, “when I write emotionally, I know what I want to feel, and I wasn’t able to do that. [But] being on that and feeling less anxious allowed me to write about things that I don’t normally write about.”
“Straight Line Was a Lie” is The Beths’ vision of a studio album, as opposed to their first three that were meant to emulate a live show. There are more instrumental variations and some of the most engaging songs The Beths have ever made.