The Beths Unveil New Single 'Metal' + Video

Aotearoa power-pop top dogs The Beths treat fans to their first single in two years 'Metal', launched in sync with the announcement of a humungous forty nine date northern hemisphere tour and their new alliance with US heavyweights ANTI-. The 2023 Silver Scroll Award winners will teaming up with local pals Phoebe Rings for the North American leg of their epic-scale adventure, joined in Los Angeles by Grammy Award winning Flight Of The Conchords icon Bret McKenzie (full tour details HERE).

Not in fact an unexpected swerve into studded leather and diabolical riff worship, but instead a lovely jangle-rock tune, singer / guitarist Elizabeth Stokes explained how 'Metal' considers the complexity of these meat prisons that carry us through the world. Longterm allies of The Beths, video production gurus Sports Team have come to the party, casting Stokes, Jonathan Pearce, Benjamin Sinclair and Tristan Deck as poncho-wearing, cutlery-detecting foragers, roaming through overcast rural pastures with creativity in mind...

“In some ways ‘Metal’ is a song about being alive and existing in a human bod. 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.

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 can’t be contained to the lower register. I think we ended up with an arrangement that embodies the frenetic intricacy of an engine in action. There’s a lot going on, until there isn’t.”

'Metal' is out today on major streaming platforms via ANTI-.