The Beths Sign to ANTI-, Release New Single/Video & Announce Fall World Tour

The Beths — the New Zealand-based quartet of vocalist Elizabeth Stokes, guitarist Jonathan Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair, and drummer Tristan Deck — announce signing to ANTI- and releasing the new single/video, “Metal.” “Metal” is the band’s first taste of new music since the release of 2023’s Expert In A Dying Field (Deluxe), the expanded version of their beloved 2022 album.

Following Liz Stokes’s recently sold solo show at Largo in Los Angeles with special guests Courtney Barnett and Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords), The Beths announce a world tour across North America, the UK, and Europe this fall. The band returns to the U.S. for the first time since playing Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Newport Folk Festival and supporting The National, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Postal Service in 2023-2024. They’ll headline some of their most prominent venues, 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. Tickets go on sale Fri. May 2 at 10 am local and are available here.

Today’s single “Metal” was born out of a time of rigorous touring, mental health struggles, and several diagnoses for Stokes. “In some ways ‘Metal’ is a song about being alive and existing in a human body,” she explains. “That is something I have been acutely aware of in the last few years, where I have been on what one might call a ‘health journey’. For parts of the last few years, I kind of felt like my body was a vehicle that had carried me pretty well thus far but was breaking down, something I had little to no control over. All of the steps in the Rube Goldberg machine of life are so unlikely, and yet here we are in it. I have a hunger and a curiosity for learning about the world around me, and for learning about myself. And despite all the ways that my body feels like a broken machine, I still marvel at the complexity of such a machine.”

“I can hold that knowledge in one hand, and yet with the other hand I can point to my reflection and just be like ‘you are shit’. Or ‘ugly’. Or ‘worthless’. I can reliably respond to any suggestion that I might be able to achieve any small thing with ‘no’. And these are variations of the ‘short word’ referenced in the song.”

Sonically, the track sees The Beths fully embracing jangle rock. Stokes says, “There was a propulsion to the acoustic strumming pattern on the original demo. Tristan’s drums meet that feeling so perfectly, the feeling of a train pushing up the tracks. Jonathan got to play his Burns 12-string guitar as sparkly as he wanted, and Ben as usual, couldn’t be contained to the lower register. I think we ended up with an arrangement embodying an engine’s frenetic intricacy in action. A lot is going on, until there isn’t.”