Following the existential crunch of last month’s single “No Joy”, The Beths return with their most emotionally raw release yet.
“Mother, Pray For Me” is a stripped-down and deeply personal ballad, built around plaintive finger-picked guitar and the kind of intimate vocal delivery that feels less like a performance and more like a confession.
“It’s not really about my mother, it’s about me — 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,” says vocalist Elizabeth Stokes. “I cried the whole time writing it.”
On the surface, the track might read as a plea for connection. But dig deeper, and it’s a reckoning: with her family, with her faith, and with herself. “My mother is a first gen Indonesian immigrant, and very Catholic,” Stokes explains. “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.”
While a full band arrangement was initially workshopped, the final recording pulls back to just Stokes and a guitar — with a touch of organ — giving the song an almost confessional stillness. “In the end it seemed to feel the clearest with just me and the guitar,” she says.
“Mother, Pray For Me” is the third single lifted from Straight Line Was a Lie, The Beths’ fourth album and their first on ANTI-, out August 29th. It follows the acclaimed Expert in a Dying Field (2022), which earned the band a Rolling Stone Global Award, an APRA Silver Scroll nomination, and support slots with The National, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Postal Service.
But getting to this new record wasn’t easy. Stokes has been candid about the challenges of writing post-Expert, including the effect of starting antidepressants, which helped in many areas of life but made songwriting less instinctual. “I was kind of dealing with a new brain,” she told Rolling Stone AU/NZ earlier this year. “My instincts were just a little different — they weren’t as panicky.”
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In an effort to get unstuck, she and guitarist/producer Jonathan Pearce dismantled their usual creative process. Inspired by authors like Stephen King and Robert Caro, Stokes began writing stream-of-consciousness pages every morning on a Remington typewriter. “Writing so much down forced me to look at stuff that I didn’t want to look at,” she said. “In the past, in my memories. Things I normally don’t like to think about or I’m scared to revisit.”
The result is an album that embraces emotional complexity and the messiness of healing. “Linear progression is an illusion,” Stokes says. “What life really is is maintenance. But you can find meaning in the maintenance.”
With Straight Line Was a Lie, The Beths — Stokes, Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair and drummer Tristan Deck — offer their sharpest and most introspective work yet. The album will be supported by a run of shows across the UK, Europe, and North America, including headline dates at The Fillmore in San Francisco and Union Transfer in Philadelphia.
“Mother, Pray For Me” by The Beths is available now. Straight Line Was a Lie is out August 29th via ANTI- and can be pre-ordered here.
