The Beths have been steadily rolling out new material in the lead-up to their next record Straight Line Was A Lie.
They had us at Metal, and almost lost us with No Joy — but even then, you could tell the latter was just one tune in a much bigger picture. Their latest drop Mother, Pray For Me confirms it.
It’s their most emotionally raw release to date. Stripped back to just finger-picked guitar and a threadbare organ, Elizabeth Stokes’ vocal is fragile and wide-eyed — a soft, aching plea across generations. She’s not just singing about her mother, but everything that’s wrapped up in that word: identity, faith, expectation, distance, and hope.
“I cried the whole time writing it,” Stokes reflects. “It’s not really about my mother, it’s about me — what I hope our relationship is, what I think it is, what it maybe actually is, and what I can or can’t expect out of it.”
Stokes continues, “My mother is a first gen Indonesian immigrant, and very Catholic. I was born in Jakarta and we moved to Auckland when I was four. I think this song is me trying to understand my relationship with my mum, and her relationship to her faith and with her own mother. It was hard to write. We came up with a full band arrangement for the song, but in the end it seemed to feel the clearest with just me and the guitar. And a bit of organ.”
Stokes says she cried the whole time writing it. We cried listening to it. It’s delicate, devastating, and might just be the quiet centrepiece of the album.
