The Beths announce new album 'Jump Rope Gazers' and release video for new track “Dying To Believe”

Publish Date
Thursday, 9 April 2020, 10:48AM

The Beths have announced their new album 'Jump Rope Gazers' set for release July 10th and shared its lead single/video, “Dying to Believe.”

'Jump Rope Gazers' is the follow-up to 'Future Me Hates Me', “one of the most impressive indie-rock debuts of the year” (Pitchfork). The album received glowing praise and appeared on many year-end lists including Rolling Stone, NPR, Stereogum, and more. The album saw The Beths awarded Best Alternative Act and Best Group at the 2019 Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards. The Beths were also finalists for last year’s Taite Prize and Silver Scroll Award in 2018 and 2019.

'Jump Rope Gazers' tackles themes of anxiety and self-doubt with effervescent power-pop choruses and rousing backup vocals, zeroing in on the communality and catharsis that can come from sharing stressful situations with some of your best friends.

After touring non-stop for a year and a half, playing to crowds of devoted fans and opening for acts like Pixies and Death Cab for Cutie, The Beths regrouped to write and record 'Jump Rope Gazers'. The band - composed of Elizabeth Stokes (vocals/guitar), Jonathan Pearce (guitar), Benjamin Sinclair (bass), and Tristan Deck (drums) - settled down at Pearce’s Auckland studio, where he recorded and produced the album.

Stokes’s writing on 'Jump Rope Gazers' grapples with the uneasy proposition of leaving everything and everyone you know behind on another continent, chasing your dreams while struggling to stay close with loved ones back home. Rambunctious lead single “Dying to Believe” reckons with the distance that life necessarily drives between people over time: “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations // They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” Stokes sings. The accompanying visual is an eccentric four-step “How to be the Beths” instructional video featuring the band.

Touring far from home, The Beths committed to taking care of each other while simultaneously trying to take care of friends living thousands of miles away. That care and attention shines through on 'Jump Rope Gazers', where the quartet sounds more locked in than ever. 'Jump Rope Gazers' stares down all the hard parts of living in communion with other people, even at a distance, while celebrating the ferocious joy that makes it all worth it.

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