The Beths Look For Life's Purpose On "Watching The Credits" | THE NOISE
New Zealand power-pop band The Beths rocked 2022 with the release of their album Expert In A Dying Field. Now, they're back with "Watching The Credits," an infectious one-off single that was recorded during the sessions for that LP. On the track, bandleader Elizabeth Stokes explores her fixation on the how-to of making movies, where she imagines herself as filling in the role of a film director.
The single is breezy, upbeat, and full of energetic, fun guitar-rock that displays Stokes' melodic gifts as well as her ability to tell a story, with this tale specifically being about a hapless director trying to make a movie. She sings memorable lyrics like, "When all of the lines you've learned are/ Bleeding on the cutting room floor/ There's no star on the door/ Good God/ Who are you making this for?" and "Maybe it's something we can fix in post." Meanwhile, the band pulls listeners into a world of chaos, with crashing percussion, summery guitar riffs, and thrumming bass lines leading the charge. On the addictive chorus and outro, she belts, "And I spend all night cutting up edits/ Watching the credits to find direction in my existence," desperately looking for her life's purpose in the details but ultimately unsure of where to even find it.
"For a long time, I didn't really like watching movies, but I did like learning about movies," Stokes explains. "Podcasts, articles, YouTube videos, behind-the-scenes clips, critical analysis. I'd read the Wikipedia plot synopses instead of watching the movie though. I've since got over this weird behaviour (mostly) and now consider myself a 'movie person' who enjoys actually watching movies."
She continued, "My relationship with music has gotten strange over the last few years. I think now that it's my job, I associate it with work, which is something I don't love. Maybe I was drawn to absorbing content about a creative medium that had some things in common with music but didn't feel so existential. Making a movie with hundreds of people seems like such a huge herculean effort compared to making an album with your band. Long story short, I think I blurted all of that absorbed content out into this quite silly song. We recorded it as part of the 3rd album but swapped it out last as it didn't feel like it really fit."
Alongside the single release, The Beths also shared a slate of additional tour days extending their run of shows in North America. The summer tour now includes 17 new shows, with three scheduled for Brooklyn's Music Hall of Williamsburg at the close of the tour in October.
Be sure to check out The Beth's latest single, "Watching The Credits," today!
