Q&A: The Beths' Liz Stokes on New Zealand band's 1st Halloween show, new album and more

The Beths have toured all over the United States for more than seven years, but the New Zealand indie rock band hit a first last Friday — playing a Halloween show here. And singer/guitarist Liz Stokes was feeling the pressure.

“When we’re at home, you grab what you have and assemble something, but we’re on the road so we made a cultural experience: a visit to Spirit Halloween. That’s my first time, and it was overwhelming,” Stokes said with a laugh in an Oct. 31 call. “We’ll dress up in something. We’ll make an attempt, but I know people go pretty hard here.”

The Beths pulled off a “Jurassic Park” theme for the Atlanta show, the second night of their North American tour in support of their fourth album, “Straight Line Was a Lie.” The tour hits the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks on Nov. 26, with Phoebe Rings opening.

Besides their first Halloween concert — other than a New Zealand house show in the past — the Beths made their late-night TV debut last week on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” with a performance of the album’s title track. The Beths have been slowly accumulating new gear, after their guitars, bass guitar, drum parts and a pedal board were stolen in September while on tour in France.

“(The show) was great. It was a bit of a roller-coaster. We heard that we got it, and it was very exciting,” Stokes said. “And then a few days later, the show got pulled from the air, and we were a bit sad, and then the show went back on the air, and we were like, OK, are we back on? And then we found out that we were, and it was back on. It was great. It’s interesting how everything works behind the scenes and all of the different jobs, and it’s a well-oiled machine, pulling this thing together. So it was fun to witness and to be a part of.”

In a Zoom conversation from Atlanta, Stokes spoke with TribLive about the new album, a song about her mother, the band’s closing song and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

It seems like a pretty busy year for the band with the album and with three-plus months of touring to end the year. What do you plan on doing when the tour is over in December?

We’ll get home, it’ll be mid-December and it will be properly summer in New Zealand, which will be nice. So we’ll go home, do all of my Christmas shopping and then hang out with friends and family, go to the beach, do all the Christmas stuff, southern hemisphere Christmas stuff which is just enjoy the sun and see friends. And do some writing, I think, in January, so that will be my plan.

The new album “Straight Line Was a Lie” came out this year, so do you feel like you achieved what you wanted to with that?

I think we’re really proud of where that album ended up. It’s hard making a fourth album. You never think you’ll make four albums when you start a band with your friends. There’s a sense of we wanted to do something different. I feel like we’ve managed to do that in a way that’s kind of inside out. It started from the songs and that pointed us in the direction we wanted to go, rather than being like, well, I think we want to make this kind of album to be different from previous ones. It felt really song driven. There’s a bit more vulnerability. Then within that, it’s trying to find and keep and hold on to the things that we love about being in the band and that we hope that people like about listening to the band, keeping the band element strong. We feel like, as long as our hands are on the instruments and we’re structuring everything together, it still should sound like us. And hopefully it still does.

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But it sounds like you also don’t want to make the same album over and over again.

Yeah, for sure. Even if you want to, there are times when I’m like, well, we should write an arrangement that feels like an old Beths arrangement. And then it just feels that you’ve already written it. It feels like you’re retelling the same story at a dinner party to people who are like, we already know the story. So it feels like you do have to find a new story, find a new way to express yourself, but we’re not going to alienate. We like the band that we are, we don’t want to be a different band.

What does the album’s title mean to you?

It’s the first song on the album, and it was the last song written, so it feels like the song itself is almost a thesis statement, like it’s at the start, and it was written late because I had finished writing most of the songs much earlier. We whittled down these 25 songs into the ones that were going to be on the album. I started to look through those songs and try and find a through line, because I know that you have to talk about the thing that you’ve made, and you can’t just say, no, I’m not going to talk about my songs.

I really was doing a lot of self-examination, and it’s like, OK, here’s the thing that represents the last few years of my life. What were the last few years of my life about? Let’s think about that, and it felt like it had come from a place of mental health and physical health. It felt like I was in this hole, and then climbing out of the hole and finding and using these systems to help myself find the routine, and find my footing. I saw the upward trajectory and got intoxicated by it and was like, I think I’m going to be fixed. I think my life is going to be progress from here and it’s just going to keep getting better and everything’s going to be fine. I think a lot of people may be subject to this, but life isn’t a straight line. You kind of squiggle around a bit. So I guess that the “Straight Line Was a Lie” is trying to summarize in a more succinct way than I can with words, obviously, because I’ve been rambling for like five minutes. (laughs) The title is the idea that life isn’t just a straight line of progress for everybody. Sometimes it’s circular and sometimes you go backwards, but that’s still moving through it.

The song, “Mother, Pray For Me,” was that a tough one to write? The relationship between a mother and a daughter can be complicated.

Yeah, it was really tough to write, something that I don’t think I would have been able to write until now. It’s a subject that’s almost kind of sacred or something. For me personally, the song’s coming from a place of me and my mom having this cultural gap between us. She’s Indonesian and I’m half, but I grew up in New Zealand. So there’s a literal language barrier, and it’s a cultural barrier, and it’s trying to look at each other from across this gulf of understanding and trying to see each other and understand each other, feeling how hard that is. But I feel like for a lot of people with their parents, there is that same gap and there doesn’t need to be a literal language barrier or a cultural barrier to feel that feeling of wanting to understand each other and feeling like it’s hard to.

The band’s been closing with “Take” so what makes that song a good finale for the show?

It’s really fun to play live. We did a few shows, small shows in New Zealand and Australia, where we were trying out new material before the album was finished, and we tried “Take” in the encore and just felt like a great way to finish the show. There’s a song called “Little Death” that we’ve always put in the bit because people really gravitate to it. Something about it really translates live, and it really fills the room with this balloon of euphoria. It fills the whole room and ”Take” feels like it nearly fits that same kind of place. It’s nice to finish the show feeling like you’re still in the middle of that feeling of overwhelming euphoria.

The band’s played in Pittsburgh a few times in the past. Do you have any memories of your shows at Mr. Smalls or at Spirit?

Yeah, we often say Pittsburgh is one of the most beautiful cities in America. We’re excited to come back. It’s just beautiful, all the architecture and all the beautiful bridges on the river. It’s got a real feeling, and we really enjoy going there and playing there. People are always lovely in that part of the world. We feel so right at home and we’re excited to go back and see some beautiful bridges. No shade to other towns. There are some flavorless towns, where we go, OK, people live here and they make it special. But looking around, you’re like, OK, big box stores. But Pittsburgh’s got some cool vibes going on.