The band found an outlet through live-streaming, returning to the do-it-yourself mentality of their early days to connect with a global audience. What does it mean, if we can't play live?” “It's a huge part of how we see ourselves. As well as worrying about economic survival, they lost something crucial to the band’s identity: live performance. But within days, New Zealand’s lockdown split the band between three separate houses. Home after an 18-month northern hemisphere tour, they had just finished recording sophomore album Jump Rope Gazers and were primed for more extensive touring. In March 2020, everything seemed on track for another huge year for The Beths. “That’s the sensational part of what we actually did.” In a mid-pandemic world, playing to a heaving, enraptured home crowd feels miraculous. The album title, and film of the same name, deliberately include the date and location, lead guitarist Jonathan Pearce says. It’s a collective exhalation, in one of the few countries where live music is still possible. The anticipation is there in Elizabeth Stokes’ solo guitar riff under the opening lines of “I’m Not Getting Excited”: a frenetic, driving force daring a packed Auckland Town Hall to do exactly the opposite of what the track title suggests.Īs the opener of The Beths’ Auckland, New Zealand, 2020 expands to include the full band, the crowd screeches and bellows.
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