On rising Kiwi indie rockers The Beths’ new album Expert In A Dying Field, Elizabeth Stokes’ songwriting positions her somewhere between being a novelist and a documentarian.
The songs collected here are autobiographical, but they’re also character sketches of relationships and more importantly, their aftermaths. The question that hangs in the air: what do you do with how intimately versed you’ve become in a person, once they’re gone from your life? The third LP from the New Zealand quartet houses 12 jewels of tight, guitar-heavy songs that worm their way into your head, an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz.
The album’s title track ‘Expert In A Dying Field’ introduces the thesis for the record: “How does it feel to be an expert in a dying field? How do you know it’s over when you can’t let go?” Stokes asks. “Love is learned over time ‘til you’re an expert in a dying field.”
“It’s like Liz Phair fronting a band with Beatles-level melodic smarts.” – Rolling Stone
“A relentlessly upbeat barrage of electric guitar, punk drums, and sing-along vocal hooks that’s done before you know it, begging for you to hit the repeat button and start it over.” – MTV
“A new paradigm has been discovered and Liz Stokes is its Einstein.” – WXPN The Key
“Peppy and locked-in” – Stereogum
“[‘Jump Rope Gazers’] fills me with unbridled joy” – Phoebe Bridgers
