The Beths – Straight Line Was a Lie (Anti-) (13th Floor Album Review)
From the first fuzzed-up guitar riff to the final jubilant outro, The Beths’ fourth album, Straight Line Was a Lie, reveals a band in full command of its material and entering a new creative phase.
Every track carries weight, shifting in tone and intensity while maintaining emotional clarity and musical drive. The performances are confident and assured, and the songs feel fully realised from the inside out.
Elizabeth Stokes (vocals, guitar), Jonathan Pearce (guitar, keyboards, co-production), Benjamin Sinclair (bass, flute, recorder), and Tristan Deck (drums) continue to showcase their tight musicianship, melodic awareness, and lyrical insight. Across their discography, the promise and punch of Future Me Hates Me (2018), the emotional broadening of Jump Rope Gazers (2020), and the polished vulnerability of Expert in a Dying Field (2022) have set a high bar. Straight Line Was a Lie builds on that with cohesion, urgency, and lasting impact. The production team, including Pearce, bring balance and clarity, allowing both nuance and noise, as well as drive and restraint to shine through.
The album opens with Straight Line Was a Lie, a loud, rhythmically charged track led by fuzzed-out guitar and submerged vocals. The shifts between quiet and loud place Stokes’ voice at the heart of a swirling mix of noise and restraint. It is an immediately engaging beginning that sets the tone for an album full of movement, where rhythm, harmony, and mood are constantly shifting.
Metal captures that momentum. A song about biology and identity, it moves with clarity and purpose. “I’m a collaboration / Bacteria, carbon and light / A florid orchestration / A recipe of fortune and time”. The music matches the urgency of the words, with seamless changes in dynamics and a final clean percussive stop. The arrangement reflects the tension between physical matter and meaning that runs through the lyrics.
No Joy brings a tougher edge, with a punkish energy and stop-start structure. Its sharp guitar riff and tight drumming recall early The Jam and the more abrasive moments of Blondie. The title reads as a likely nod to No Fun by The Stooges or the Sex Pistols, placing the song in that lineage of emotional detachment and raw delivery. “Spirit should be crushing / But I don’t feel sad, I feel nothing.” Instruments drop in and out, and the track never fully resolves, mirroring the emotional state it describes.
The album’s emotional centrepiece is Mother, Pray for Me, a devastating track that strips the arrangement back to a bare core. The line “Mother, don’t cry for me / I have done enough injury / I wanted to hurt you for the hurt you made in me” is stark and unforgettable. Stokes’ voice carries the weight of those words with a gentle and deliberate delivery. Sinclair’s bass is minimal and supportive, while Pearce’s chiming guitar lines circle the melody with a quiet intensity. The result is a song of deep personal reckoning.
Other standouts include Mosquitoes, which begins with acoustic restraint before bursting into a powerful guitar solo and concludes with the sounds of birds singing, a subtle and striking coda.
Til My Heart Stops grows from quiet reflection into full band release. Its chorus lyrics, “I want to ride my bike in the rain / I want to fly my kite in the hurricane / I want to dance til my heart stops,” become a refrain of defiance.
Take builds energy from a single chord, shifting tempo and structure as it gathers force. Even in more playful tracks like Roundabout and Best Laid Plans, the band holds its shape; the latter, the final track, offers a sense of lightness and resolution. The album ends with the sound of low key celebration.
Stokes’ vocals are consistently assured, moving between conversational, deadpan, reflective and emotionally exposed. She stretches lines when she wants them to linger and shortens them when urgency is required. Her lyrics have become more personal and more meaningful. They carry emotional specificity, gaining greater clarity or connection.
Instrumentally, The Beths are unified and expressive. Pearce delivers gnarly riffs and melodic lines with control and imagination. Sinclair plays with restraint and provides texture when needed. Deck’s drumming always contributes to the emotional direction of each track. The production captures the band’s energy, sharpness and wit.
Straight Line Was a Lie presents a band that deliver hooks, skillfully use changes in key and tone, and maintain momentum across ten energetic alternative pop rock songs. Stokes’ lyrics have become sharper, the arrangements more dynamic, and the emotional depth more resonant. This is a band confident in their craft, committed to the songs, and more compelling than ever. And they are just hitting their groove.
John Bradbury
Straight Line Was A Lie by The Beths
Out Friday 29 August via ANTI-
Pre-Order HERE
