The Beths are a small part of a much greater
Auckland-based collective whole, a group of musical projects that include the
likes of Sal Valentine & The Babyshakes and others. Long-time friends
Elizabeth Stokes, Jonathan Pearce, Benjamin Sinclair and Ivan Luketina-Johnston
seem intent on using this project to revive and celebrate the increasingly lost
art of high energy guitar pop. Starting with the bouncy ‘Whatever’, which
combines hooks, crooks and guitar solos, Warm Blood is a whirlwind 19-minute
blast across five high tempo tracks. Each pays homage to a bygone era in one
form or another, and all contain a distinctly retro post-punk fraying around
the edges. Pearce recorded, mixed and mastered the EP, and while for the most
part Stokes is the lead vocalist, the band embrace girl/boy vocal exchanges and
clever harmonies, and use catchy backing vocals to provide genuine Beths’
signature moments. Stokes also wrote the majority of the material for Warm
Blood, the only exception being Luketina-Johnston’s ‘Rush Hour 3’, which
perhaps owes the biggest debt of all to the retro styles of the ’60s beat
groups a lot of this music recreates.
This review originally appeared in the
August/September 2016 edition of NZ Musician Magazine:
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