Shanti Mathias finds the globetrotting Auckland band slicker than ever on their current New Zealand tour.
“This is like, the third or fourth pancake,” said Liz Stokes, holding her glittery white electric guitar in Ōtautahi’s James Hay Theatre. She meant that The Beths, New Zealand’s indie-pop favourites, have been touring their new album across Europe and the US for months, and they have the performance down.
It certainly felt that way. I’ve been listening to The Beths since 2018, and Christchurch’s Town Hall (admittedly a smaller theatre off the main auditorium) is much nicer than the sticky floors of San Fran in Wellington where I saw them perform first. The Beths are slick – they’ve played each of their songs, from the new album as well as earlier releases, hundreds of times, and it shows.
The contrast with opening band Bub made this clear. Bub are excellent – lead singer Priya Sami is funny, wore pink eyeliner, and won the whole audience over with a song she had written at age 15 about marrying Julian Casablancas of The Strokes. But they had to pause while Sami reconfigured her guitar pedals, while The Beths have mastered the ability to tune their instruments while talking. Bub’s performance was endearingly chaotic, but The Beths just got on with it, “playing songs in a businesslike fashion”, as guitarist Jonathan Pearce noted at one point. It was the band’s strength as well as a weakness, the assured energy from each member of the band making it slightly harder to get inside the music.
When Straight Line was a Lie – The Beths’s most recent album – was released in August 2025, frontwoman Stokes talked extensively about the personal experiences that had inspired the music; the 2023 Auckland floods, taking antidepressants and her complex relationship with her Indonesian mum. Performing music that personal, especially when it’s high energy, with complicated guitar and bass lines, must take a toll. This was most noticeable in Stokes’ solo performance of ‘Mother Pray for Me’, the intimacy of the song and heartfelt words not given quite enough space to breathe after jokey band introductions and before launching into ‘Knees Deep’.
“That’s the punishment part of the set,” Pearce joked, after playing Straight Line was a Lie track ‘Roundabout’. “But we want to keep playing songs from our new album.”
The difference between songs with really clear hooks and choruses and some of the band’s more obscure repertoire was obvious. I liked having the opportunity to listen to these songs more closely, appreciating new dimensions I hadn’t heard on the recording. But I would have liked to hear the musicians briefly talk about the music and introduce these lesser-known songs, instead of rushing past them. As it was, the only commentary on the music was Stokes remarking that ‘Mother Pray for Me’ was an “intimate” song.
At times, it felt like the band was trying to bring back a primary school music class: Pearce and Sinclair pulled out brightly coloured plastic recorders, Stokes dinged a triangle, then used a banana shaker. It added a bit of visual variety to the show, and felt like an affirmation that The Beths are a band who like to have fun. The set design was simple but excellent: a painted banner with the band’s name rendered as twirling vines, cloth-covered lamps that flicked on and off, immaculate work from the lighting team with twirling gels cutting through the haze.
With four acclaimed albums and EP Warm Blood, there’s a lot of music for The Beths to choose from. But they’re clearly determined not to get caught in nostalgia (unlike other blockbuster New Zealand performances): everyone likes Future Me Hates Me, but the band clearly wants people to appreciate different songs from their new album. That dedication to the new makes me convinced The Beths will be able to keep going from strength to strength. It helps that each member is so musically talented: Pearce shines in guitar solos, like in ‘No Joy’, and I particularly liked how drummer Tristan Deck added texture on slower songs like ‘Take’ and ‘Best Laid Plans’.
The very personal, specific words of ‘Mother Pray for Me’ and ‘Mosquitoes’ sounded amazing from the front of general admission, but I also appreciated how well some of the album’s more abstract lyrics came across when sung by everyone around me. Here is where all that practice shines: Stokes moved effortlessly through starting-again single ‘Straight Line was a Lie’ and iron-deficiency anthem ‘Metal’ until it was impossible for the crowd not to see ourselves in the words. The Beths have always been a band set apart by their mix of incisive and wry lyrics: yes, I do need the metal in my blood to keep me alive! Yes, I don’t know if I can go round again, even as the fractal chorus decays into a perfect mix of Stokes and backing vocals from the band.
The best song of the night was undoubtedly ‘Till my Heart Stops’, a manifesto of sorts, toeing the line between excessively twee and moving. Live, the music sounded fuller – a little more space for the bass line, perhaps? – than the recording. “I fly my kite in a hurricane,” sang Stokes, and it felt so true, even though it had been warm and sunny all day. The lyrics seemed so perfect for the moment, the hurricanes we cannot control, the joy and fun required to keep going as straight lines curve around you. When the song finished, the person standing next to me was wiping tears from her eyes.
