endorsement from Obama<\/a>, but then came what Stokes calls \u201cthe crash\u201d in her personal life. She was diagnosed with Graves\u2019 disease, an autoimmune condition that causes the body to make too much thyroid hormone which \u201creally messes with your mental health\u201d \u2013 to put it lightly. \u201cI\u2019m already predisposed to anxiety and depression, but it really ramped it up,\u201d says Stokes. \u201cThere was also this slow post-Covid realisation that maybe the world actually doesn\u2019t feel like a very optimistic or inspiring place any more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nShe started taking SSRIs, or anti-depressants, and soon found she could start rebuilding routine in her life. \u201cIt was kind of amazing being in a brain that didn\u2019t have this spinning wheel of anxiety for the first time,\u201d she says. While she was getting to know her \u201cnew, quiet brain\u201d, Stokes encountered a surprising new hurdle \u2013 writer\u2019s block. \u201cWhen I\u2019m writing, it\u2019s always very instinctual and very much writing by feel,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut it felt like my compass was not pointing strongly in any direction, and that made it really hard to write songs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But just because Stokes couldn\u2019t write songs, didn\u2019t mean she couldn\u2019t just\u2026 write. She read Stephen King\u2019s advice-laden memoir On Writing and began a daily routine of free-writing 10 pages every morning on a typewriter (not unlike the protagonist in King\u2019s The Shining). \u201cEven though it seems silly. It just felt like the right tool for the job because you can\u2019t erase anything, and so you can\u2019t edit your thoughts,\u201d she says. \u201cThe sound is so good too and the tactileness of it \u2013 you want the act of writing to feel good, as well as being something that you have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\")
Liz Stokes, Ben Sinclair, Tristan Deck and Jonathan Pearce of The Beths.<\/p>\n
And with the SSRIs quelling her anxiety, Stokes says she was able to \u201cpull stuff out\u201d from her own life and onto the page that she couldn\u2019t have thought about previously. The giant stack of pages continued to grow while she and Johnathan Pearce, her partner and bandmate, decided to go on a writing retreat \u2013 not to a forest hut or beachside bach, but to Los Angeles. \u201cI would write all day, and then in the evening we could go out and see comedy, or a gig or watch an old movie. I feel like when you\u2019re writing, you need stuff going in if you\u2019re going to pull stuff out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The system worked, and within that stack of pages contained much of the base material that would become Straight Line Was a Lie. \u201cIt\u2019s really comforting to me, the idea that you don\u2019t actually have to wait for inspiration,\u201d says Stokes. \u201cYou just have to do the work consistently and you\u2019ll find your way out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the first songs to emerge during the writing process was \u2018No Joy\u2019, a classic hooky adrenaline-packed Beths song with deep depression lurking under its dynamism: \u201cSpirit should be crushing \/ But I don\u2019t feel sad, I feel nothing.\u201d Stokes wanted to capture the feeling of anhedonia \u2013 not being able to find joy \u2013 without making a totally joyless song. \u201cIt feels like a fairly universal feeling, not liking the things that you like any more and not really understanding why, and being like, \u2018is this what it\u2019s like from now on? Am I dead?\u2019\u201d she laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Mosquitos\u2019 is another song that was formed partly in the morning pages, telling a spare story about Stokes returning to her walking spot at Oakley Creek to find it \u201ctotally changed\u201d following the Auckland Anniversary flood. \u201cI was nervous writing it because my experience with the flood wasn\u2019t life-altering as it was for some people,\u201d she says. \u201cI tried to keep it very small \u2013 it\u2019s just my little experience of interacting with this really big thing, which sometimes feels like the world is falling apart and changing in ways where it\u2019s never going to be the same again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a song with a lot more sonic space than previous Beths songs, sometimes just the vocals standing entirely on their own, which Stokes says forces people to engage differently with the words and creates a sense of intimacy. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I don\u2019t normally feel confident about doing. On other albums it has been more about bringing a certain energy to the songs, and creating that driving feeling,\u201d she says. \u201cSongs like \u2018Mosquitos\u2019 are about me starting to feel OK with the idea that we can make space for different songs. We\u2019re allowed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the album\u2019s emotional apex, \u2018Mother Pray for Me\u2019, Stokes explores her complicated relationship with her mother \u2013 \u201cI would like to know you, and I want you to know me. Do we still have time? Can we try?\u201d \u2013 against achingly gentle instrumentals. It\u2019s another topic she says she couldn\u2019t have explored even a few years ago. \u201cWe love each other a lot, but there\u2019s this cultural and generational gap between us,\u201d says Stokes. \u201cShe\u2019s Indonesian and I was born there, but we moved here when I was really young so I\u2019ve always had this disconnect.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exploring questions of faith and family expectations, Stokes wasn\u2019t expecting to find any answers in writing the song. \u201cI haven\u2019t solved anything, but I have been talking to my therapist about it.\u201d Her mum heard the song about a month ago. \u201cIt felt like a big, meaningful moment where I played the song for her and had the lyrics up on the screen and \u2013 this is really quite funny \u2013 she was just like \u2018wow, it\u2019s really long\u2019,\u201d Stokes laughs. \u201cNot like \u2018get on with it\u2019, but just impressed that I had written such a long piece of music.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was yet another muddling moment in life that didn\u2019t necessarily deliver a neat conclusion, but Stokes is at peace with it. \u201cIn a way, it\u2019s just the continuation of this thing where we still don\u2019t fully see each other, but she knows that I love her and I know that she\u2019s very proud of me \u2013 it\u2019s just complicated.\u201d Much of the album is about this very thing: working through the confusions, false starts, and loops we find ourselves in. \u201cIt\u2019s a world view that I hope to carry forward: that it\u2019s OK when things go forward and go back and go around again,\u201d says Stokes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not a bug \u2013 that is what life is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Beths fourth album, Straight Line Was a Lie is out now.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Casey talks to Liz Stokes from The Beths about breaking through writer\u2019s block and accepting the mess.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5370,146,85,46,409,121189,9288,121190,119511],"class_list":{"0":"post-219502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-comments-enabled","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-nz-music","14":"tag-pop-culture","15":"tag-the-beths","16":"tag-tourism-fiji-summer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}