The Beths Salt Lake City show warmed a pre-holiday crowd with a mix of power pop favorites. The Beths, featuring Liz Stokes, are touring on their hit August album Straight Line Was a Lie. Stokes and company are touring the U.S., Japan and Australia through next summer. And after four albums, The Beths shared an easy rapport with the packed house at Salt Lake City’s Metro Music Hall.
The Beths Salt Lake City show features all but one album cut
Straight Line Was a Lie is destined to be part of my top albums of the year. Maybe not Top 10 but not far off. The New Zealand power pop quartet may be more pop than power on their current record but they still know how to hit the feels. I was especially interested in how they featured ballads “Mother Pray For Me” and “Mosquitoes.” Although I typically prefer the crunchier numbers, “Mother” was a showstopper.
Stokes explained when ANTI released the single “Mother Pray For Me” how difficult it was for her to write the instant classic. Originally conceived as another band number, The Beths wisely scaled back to Stokes and guitar. She sings about her mother’s Catholic faith in Indonesia and their shared relationship. Stokes says she “cried the whole time writing it,” and when performing live stumbled over the first few words. However, nothing took away from from the performance and lyrics, evocative and unironic.
The Beths Salt Lake City performance included “Future Me Hates Me” and “Little Death” from the band’s debut Future Me Hates Me. They also played three cuts from Jump Rope Gazers and 2022’s “Expert in a Dying Field.” After a 90 minute set, they encored with Straight Line’s “Take” but curiously didn’t perform “Roundabout,” which I thought was one of the album’s strongest and most audience-friendly compositions.
On stage: living room lamps and flying recorders
The Beths have assembled a warm and creative stage, backed by a tapestry I fully expect was sewn together by the band. I would confirm this if I weren’t too lazy to find the answer online. Four lamps with colored bulbs synchronized the shows overhead lighting, mimicking something of a home performance.
Most delightful, drummer Tristan Deck was credited with manufacturing what The Beths referred to as a “recorder distribution system.” On cue, guitarists Jonathan Pearce and Benjamin Sinclair used pedals that shot the recorders via some mystical propulsion system into their waiting hands to play. Now that is what we call entertainment.
Pearce also shared a funny — if meandering — story about visiting the Gateway Planetarium and a displayed pendum. He explained the device may not work at the equator something something something or the other. Honestly I lost track after a bit. Deck spent his afternoon at Salt Lake’s famed Red Iguana.
The Beths Salt Lake City show was supported by Phoebe Rings. The openers, also from Aukland, played from this year’s spacey dream pop debut Aseurai.
