The Beths – Mother, Pray For Me: 13th Floor New Song Of The Day

The Beths —the Auckland-based quartet of vocalist/guitarist Elizabeth Stokes, guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and drummer Tristan Deck —release Mother, Pray For Me, the third single/video from their new album, Straight Line Was A Lie, out August 29th on ANTI-.

Here is the blurb with more:

Following last month’s single, No Joy, “a punchy, guitar-forward track about feeling nothing at all,” Mother, Pray For Me is stripped-down and intensely personal. Over plaintive finger-picked guitar, Stokes’ voice is childlike in its wistful plea for connection. Here, Stokes grapples with the lives her parents have led, their mortality, and how to see them as people who did their best, even when it might not have felt like enough. “I cried the whole time writing it,” Stokes reflects. “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.”

Stokes continues, “My mother is a first gen Indonesian immigrant, and very Catholic. 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. We came up with a full band arrangement for the song, but in the end it seemed to feel the clearest with just me and the guitar. And a bit of organ.”

The path from The Beths’ critically celebrated and year-end-list-topping 2022 album Expert In A Dying Field to Straight Line Was A Lie was anything but straightforward. For the first time, Stokes was struggling to write new songs beyond fragments she’d recorded on her phone. She’d recently started taking an SSRI, which on one hand made her feel like she could “fix” everything broken in her life, from her mental and physical health to fraught family dynamics. At the same time, writing wasn’t coming as easily as it had before.

With Straight Line Was A Lie, Stokes and Pearce broke down the typical Beths writing process, opening themselves up to a wave of creative input, with Stokes’ free-flowing writing routine proving to be therapeutic. Already a celebrated lyricist, Stokes has long impressed fans and critics with catchy, instant-classic turns of phrase that capture the personal and ladder up to the universal. But Stokes’ intentional deconstruction and rebuilding of her relationship to writing, however, has resulted in a complete renewal. Her songwriting has achieved startling new depths of insight and vulnerability, making Straight Line Was A Lie the most sharply observant, truthful, and poetic Beths project to date.


Earlier this year, The Beths announced a northern hemisphere tour across North America, the UK and Europe this fall. They’ll headline some of their biggest venues to date, including The Wiltern in Los Angeles, The Fillmore in San Francisco, The Salt Shed in Chicago, Brooklyn Paramount in New York City, Union Transfer in Philadelphia, 9:30 Club in Washington, DC and more. A full list of dates is below, and tickets are now available here.

Straight Line Was A Lie by The Beths
Out Friday 29 August via ANTI-
Pre-Order HERE

The Beths Tour Dates:
(New Shows in Bold)
Wed. Sept. 17 – Dublin, IE @ Button Factory ! [NEW SHOW]
Thu. Sept. 18 – Dublin, IE @ Button Factory ! [SOLD OUT]
Sat. Sept. 20 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall !
Sun. Sept. 21 – Glasgow, UK @ SWG3 TV Studio !
Mon. Sept. 22 – Leeds, UK @ Project House !
Wed. Sept. 24 – Bristol, UK @ O2 Academy !
Thu. Sept. 25 – Birmingham, UK @ XOYO !
Fri. Sept. 26 – London, UK @ Roundhouse !
Sat. Sept. 27 – Brighton, UK @ CHALK !
Mon. Sept. 29 – Tourcoing, FR @ Le Grand Mix !
Tue. Sept. 30 – Paris, FR @ Le Trabendo !
Wed. Oct. 1 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique !
Fri. Oct. 3 – Cologne, DE @ Kantine !
Sat. Oct. 4 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso !
Sun. Oct. 5 – Hamburg, DE @ Knust !
Tue. Oct. 7 – Stockholm, SE @ Slaktkyrkan !
Wed. Oct. 8 Oslo, NO @ Parkteatret Scene !
Thu. Oct. 9 – Copenhagen, DK @ Pumpehuset !
Sat. Oct. 11 – Berlin, DE @ Lido !
Sun. Oct. 12 – Munich, DE @ Strom !
Mon. Oct. 13 – Zurich, CH @ Plaza !
Wed. Oct. 15 – Barcelona, ES @ Razzmatazz 2 !
Thu. Oct. 16 – Madrid, ES @ Nazca !
Fri. Oct. 17 – Lisbon, PT @ LAV !
Thu. Oct. 30 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel*
Fri. Oct. 31 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse *
Sat. Nov 1 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl *
Mon. Nov. 3 – Dallas, TX @ The Studio At The Bomb Factory *
Tue. Nov. 4 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s *
Thu. Nov. 6 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren *
Fri. Nov. 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern * ^
Sat. Nov. 8 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore * [SOLD OUT]
Sun. Nov. 9 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore *  [NEW SHOW]
Wed. Nov. 12 – Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades *
Fri. Nov. 14 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom *
Sat. Nov. 15 – Seattle, WA @ The Moore Theatre *
Sun. Nov. 16 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom *
Tue. Nov. 18 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall *
Wed. Nov. 19 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre *
Fri. Nov. 21 – Kansas City, MO @ The Truman *
Sat. Nov. 22 – St. Paul, MN @ Palace Theatre *
Sun. Nov. 23 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed (Indoor) * +
Tue. Nov 25 – Cleveland, OH @ Globe Iron *
Wed. Nov. 26 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Roxian Theatre *
Fri. Nov. 27 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall * [NEW SHOW]
Fri. Nov. 28 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall *  [SOLD OUT]
Sat. Nov. 29 – Montreal, QC @ Beanfield Theatre *
Mon. Dec. 1 – Boston, MA @ Royale * [NEW SHOW]
Tue. Dec. 2 – Boston, MA @ Royale * [SOLD OUT]
Wed. Dec. 3 – Providence, RI @ Fete Music Hall *
Fri. Dec. 5 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount * #
Sat. Dec. 6 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer * [SOLD OUT]
Sun. Dec. 7 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer * [NEW SHOW]
Tue. Dec. 9 – Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club * [SOLD OUT]
Wed. Dec. 10 – Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club * [SOLD OUT]

! w/ Dateline
* w/ Phoebe Rings
^ w/ Bret McKenzie
+ w/ Squirrel Flower
# w/ illuminati hotties

The 13th Floor
Latest posts by The 13th Floor (see all)