With their masterful approach to indie pop lauded at home and overseas, The Beths are feeling “cautiously optimistic” about their brand new album. Tyson Beckett catches up with the band on a flying visit home from touring Expert in a Dying Field - while Becki Moss photographs them around their Karangahape Road neighbourhood, for Ensemble and Sunday magazine.

When I first meet everyone’s favourite New Zealand indie band, The Beths, they are half a world away, dialling in from a carpark in Columbus, Ohio.

A few hours away from playing the last show of a six-week tour that has seen them play 26 dates across North America, they seem understandably, a little tired, but in a contented way.

This is the second time they’ve toured the US and Canada this year. They’ve played across Europe and Australia too, and life on the road as an indie band requires a decent amount of DIY leg work.

They’re also busy promoting their new album Expert in a Dying Field, but being back on the road is still somewhat of a novelty. Eyes heavy but hearts full, if you will.

Snaking their way across the continental US in a self-driven van Liz Stokes, Jonathan Pearce, Benjamin Sinclair and Tristan Deck tell me they have played what is known as a secondary market tour. Seeking out slightly smaller cities than they did when they were here in February, they played places such as San Diego, Denver and Cincinnati.The shows, to crowds of about 500, have consistently sold out.

The Beths are just scratching the surface of touring opportunities on offer in the US. “There’s a long list of cities in this giant country of that size that we can do that sort of show in, which is pretty great,” lead guitarist Pearce says.

They’re making the most of those opportunities, but also making up for lost time. Pre-pandemic the quartet were on a roll. In 2018 Rolling Stone named song Happy Unhappy the song of the summer, the band signed to American record label Carpark Records and back home their song, Future Me Hates Me, off the debut album of the same name, was shortlisted for the Silver Scroll Award.

The following year, in between an extensive touring schedule to support the album and other hugely successful acts such as Death Cab for Cutie, the band’s songwriter and lead vocalist Stokes began writing their sophomore album. Jump Rope Gazers was released in July 2020 as the world was hunkering down, international tours off the cards.

As heartbreaking as that must have been, they maintain they were actually, “lucky”.

This tour, says Pearce, has made it clear that “we were really lucky with the timing of our album that we were able to proceed with it, in a compromised way, but that we had a compelling reason to just go ahead and put it out there. That kind of kept us in people’s lives and it got us up off the couch.”

Homegrown fans were also lucky, getting many more opportunities to see the band live while they sheltered in place for almost two years.

It was, Stokes says, “A big time in New Zealand for The Beths.”

“We were happy with where we were sitting in New Zealand and we didn’t really think we had the capacity to be a huge band but I feel like we played in front of a lot of people and we grew our band in NZ.”

Local acclaim swelled. The group won Best Group and Best Alternative Artist at the 2020 Aotearoa Music Awards, as well as the coveted Best Album Award.

Now they’re back on the road internationally, steadily regaining their previous momentum. In August Expert in a Dying Field was added to the playlist of UK radio station BBC 6 Music. Stokes says it feels great to be hitting their stride, but it was also a little daunting.

“All the venues were all twice as big as the last tour we’d done in 2019. There was a sense of ‘can we pull this off?’” The growing buzz around the band suggests that yes, they can.

It’s been an exercise in delayed gratification in the sense that overseas fans are experiencing live for the first time an album that is now more than two years old. Especially because The Beths get deep satisfaction from their live performances. “We write stuff for ourselves that is on the edge of all our abilities,” says Stokes, and part of the thrill lies in seeking to perform it as perfectly as humanly possible.

“We know every little manoeuvre we need to perform from the start to the end of the set and we really strive to string them all together and perform our version of a perfect show,” Pearce adds.

Chelsea Metcalf, who performs under the moniker Chelsea Jade, and played with Stokes in her first band Teacups, describes Stokes as “an artist and an artisan. She’s totally dedicated to fluently speaking her instruments. Everybody who plays in The Beths is that way.

“When you’ve built a community that can converse in a complex language like that, the sky’s the limit and I think Liz’s songwriting reflects that. It’s prowess with the freedom of mischief.”

That prowess is all over the new album. Expert is The Beths at their fun, tight, guitar heavy best with their collective harmonies rounding out the lyrical vulnerability and inner uncertainty that characterises Stokes’ writing.

Some of the songs, such as third single Knees Deep, were written during Auckland’s 107-day lockdown last year, when the band pivoted to recording parts separately and, when allowed, holding outdoor sessions in the backyard of Stokes and Pearce’s home.

This isn’t, however, a lockdown album.

“Lockdown is just a small facet of what the last 2-3 years has been like for everybody in the world but there’s stuff that leaks in no matter what type of art is being made,” Stokes justifies.

Given the tumult the world as a collective has experienced of late, it follows that the aspects of prickling anxiety are more relatable than ever.

Having said that, one of the endearingly human aspects of Stokes’ lyrical work is her tendency to edge back from the precipice of catastrophising. You hear it in earlier works like Jump Rope Gazers. “But if I don’t see your face tonight ... I, well I guess I’ll be fine”, and it’s on Expert too. I Want to Listen ends “with a reminder to myself to try not to get so swallowed in my own emotions that I don’t notice when people close to me are struggling too.”

I ask if this propensity to tether herself gets in the way when things are going well. Can she allow herself to enjoy success in the moment?

“Still not, really. I’m working on it. I’m not actually working on it, I should be working on it. I’ve talked about working on it,” Stokes quips.

“I’ve dipped my toe in this record to some very cautious optimism. I think that’s what happens when you’re at rock bottom, you’re a little bit more comfortable with saying ‘well it could be slightly better’.

“I feel like I’ve experimented with cautious sincerity, I’ve got more comfortable with sincerity and now I’ll try to get more comfortable with optimism, but it doesn’t look good.”

Five days after our first chat, The Beths are back on home soil and we meet again. This time on Karangahape Rd in Auckland. They’re jet-lagged but seem at ease back in the home town, even if it’s all too brief. They’re here for just nine days before a new tour commences, this time in Australia.

Karangahape Rd, on which Pearce keeps a small studio, stands as somewhat of a visual marker of the pushing and pulling forces that come with the change happening around Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland and also of the hangover from the pandemic-related economic turbulence.

The shiny promise of future growth dangles in behind the band as construction ploughs ahead on the City Rail Link, the largest transport infrastructure project New Zealand has ever built.

Amidst the flux, the lively street and its inhabitants do their best to drown out the groan of change. The eclectic disorder of Karangahape Rd has long been part of the appeal.

Pearce has had his studio here since 2016. It’s where the band set down most of their music and he is relieved that their understanding landlord has, thus far, stood firm in the face of other more commercially motivated prospectors. “Somehow there’s still enough space on K Rd at the right price to have a studio there and lots of other people have small making studios and flats and basements.”

But their connection to the area runs longer and richer than a periodic tenancy. Like many Aucklanders, Stokes “has been coming to K Rd since forever.”

The area is indelibly linked with her musical career, particularly in St Kevin’s Arcade.

“It’s where The Wine Cellar is, it’s where the Whammy Bar is. So many venues have come and gone in Auckland but since we’ve been making music it’s been a huge part of our musical adolescence and adulthood living in Auckland. I feel so happy it’s still there.”

“To me that’s where the musical heart is.”

Auckland is a recognised Unesco City of Music, but for the past few years it has felt like the musical heart has been at risk of atrophying. Beloved venue St James Theatre, which closed in 2007, still sits mothballed on Queen St awaiting restoration funding. When Covid rolled into town other stalwart music venues were among the first to close and the last to reopen.

For many fans, Jump Rope Gazers soundtracked 2020 and post- lockdown celebrations and much of that revolved around venues in the area. An album release show at The Powerstation in Eden Tce in July of that year was the first live event many in Auckland’s tight-knit creative community ventured out to.

In November that year, a couple of months after another lockdown in Auckland, there was a similar feel in the air when they played at The Town Hall, filming their live album Auckland, New Zealand, 2020. In January this year the band played a five-night residency at Whammy Bar shortly after Auckland’s 107-day lockdown lifted. The Beths were there to jolt the live music scene that formed them back to life.

With the prospect of bigger things on the horizon, touring will continue to draw the band offshore, but there’s little risk that we’ll lose them completely. The Beths are beloved for their staunchly New Zealand stance and the feeling is mutual.

“We love New Zealand as well, we always want to live in New Zealand. We’re not tempted by the call that some people are tempted by to, you know, up sticks and go to one of these metropolises that are the music capital of the world,” says Pearce.

“It feels good to do good work in New Zealand.”

For bassist Sinclair there’s a grounding sense that comes from remaining within the contextual locale of his musical upbringing. “For me there’s huge interest in the regional identities of cultural scenes and sounds and I think it’s just so amazing that K Rd has a sound and Dunedin has a sound and Wellington has a sound.”

Leaving would mean losing their place in the heart of the local music scene and farewelling the community that nourishes them emotionally, but also practically.

“There are kinds of music that it makes sense to go where there’s a lot of things happening and where you can all collaborate, but for us it’d be super weird to move to a new place. We don’t know anyone, who do we borrow an amp from?” asks Stokes, with a quiet laugh.

Like all their music Expert in a Dying Field is an album designed to be played and heard live. This time, fans across the world should have a chance to. The band plays across the motu next month before heading back across the Pacific in February. In between they’re hoping to have a decent chunk of time off over summer to enjoy just being home, seeing friends and “maybe go to the beach”.

The world may be calling for The Beths, but for now they’re going to have to dial +64 to get through.

Expert in a Dying Field is out now.