If you read my blog regularly - thanks to you wonderful few! - then you know that I rarely take the time to write a post that is solely about one album. But this one gets that treatment. And because I also need to write up the show I just saw with them, we'll just tuck it all together into one package.
I freaking love the Beths. My wife just recently accused me of a crush, but it isn't just Liz Stokes who I am enamored with, it is the entire group and what I feel when I hear these songs. She walked into the living room last Sunday to find me watching their tiny desk show on the TV through YouTube, and was like "it is so weird that you are just sitting here intently watching this woman sing." But I wasn't just watching her. The whole band has this wonderfully lovely innocence about them, a joy for the music along with a naivety about acting cool on stage or trying too hard. I find it all endearing, and on top of that their music freaking jams.
So, first let's talk about the concert. That is the third time I have gotten to see them play live, and I am seriously contemplating buying tickets to see Death Cab in August just so that I can see The Beths open for them. It helps that I think their first album is their best, and then also love the most recent one, so that whether they are going deep in the catalog or reeling off new tunes, I am pretty happy either way. But their versions of old tunes like "Future Me Hates Me," "You Wouldn't Like Me," "River Run" and "I'm Not Getting Excited" made me want to run through a brick wall of excitement. I listen to those tunes over and over, and so to hear them crisply done by the live band is so very exciting. And then to hear the new tunes again was also badass. The radio has been playing "Silence is Golden" and so it has lodged into my head in a new way that made it even more exciting to yell along to it in a crowd.
I was supposed to see them play during the pandemic, which of course got shoved off. So I watched a few live-stream things that were not nearly as good as a real live show. So glad we are back to real live music!
On top of the great tunes, they also do a great job of minor joking and playful banter among themselves. I've now heard about the bassist's travel blog three different times. Keeps things light and clever versus some straight-forward, no-frills show.
As for the album, I also love it. After the initial streams of it, I thought that I still liked Future Me Hates Me more, but after many more streams, this one could be better. It runs a really fine line of being legitimately rocking and then tenderly tuneful. Bright, sugary, poppy, fun, but also with the edge of real guitars and rhythm section. You get something that sounds like an old REM driving song, like "Head in the Clouds," to something that pummels you a little bit like "Silence is Golden," to a lovely, harmonic love song like "Your Side." Also, when she Liz sings "you know" over and over in "When You Know You Know," I can't help but love the way she pronounces the word "know." "A Passing Rain" builds and throws chugging guitar and fuzzy rips at you in a purely happy way as well.
And lyrically, its top notch at times as well. The lyrics to the title track - Expert in a Dying Field - start like this: "Can we erase our history, Is it as easy as this, Plausible deniability, I swear I've never heard of it, And I can close the door on us, But the room still exists, And I know you're in it." Several of the songs dive right in to that - the breakup, the longing, the sadness. "Love is learned over time, 'til you're an expert in a dying field." Clever and cool as hell. And on top of the band being very good with their respective instruments, you get great harmonies from them underneath Liz. Tracks like "Best Left" or "Change in the Weather" exemplify their skills.
The album, regrettably, shows the lack of popularity with the wider world. Some dumb Juice Wrld track gets a billion streams and yet these guys pour their hearts out and can barely muster a million. The first three songs are generally the hits, and each has more than a million streams. Then the second place track is "When You Know You Know," which I think ought to be the one you hear. 1.8 million streams.
I feel like you should listen to the album right now, with the lyrics printed out and in hand, and you'll feel it much more deeply than I did the first few listens. Like, the imagery of Stokes only wading ankle deep into the waters on "Knees Deep," as she wrestles with her fear and admiration for the bold. it's so good.
Top notch. You should do what you can to enjoy them when you can. My pure desire is that they could get added to ACL lineup, even though they'll be playing in Austin in August. They can't cost that much! Just make it happen!
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