This week, we have confessional power pop from NZ’s The Beths and socially conscious folk from Portland’s Anna Tivel. Enjoy!
The Beths
Straight Line Was a Lie
2025, 8.5/10
All of The Beths’ albums feel like therapy, but this one more than ever. Stokes was diagnosed with Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease, two autoimmune conditions that disrupted her physical abilities. She also grapples with her relationship with her mother on ‘Mother, Please Pray For Me’.
She told Line of Best Fit, “I wanted to express how I’m feeling, but I didn’t want to embody it because it’s hard to ask somebody to sit and listen to you say something.”
After the excellent title track, most of the memorable songs are at the mellow end of their range. On ‘Mosquitoes’, Stokes meditates on the changes to her local landscape after the 2023 storms. She delivers a straightforward love song on ‘Til My Heart Stops’, while the band are jangly and tuneful on ‘Metal’.
The Beths are yet to make a substandard album, and Straight Line Was A Lie is another strong collection of songs.
Anna Tivel
Animal Poem
2025, 7.5/10
Anna Tivel was born in La Conner, a small town in Washington. Born into a musical family, she learned the fiddle from her grandfather. Animal Poem is her ninth album. She describes that it was “recorded live in a circle with some of my dearest friends … made in conversation. We wanted to be together in the room, to listen and respond in real time without the separation of walls and headphones.”
Tivel shares traits with Big Thief’s Adrienne Lenker – her voice is thin and injured, and she has a fascination with nature and human connection. But her records are gentler and more stripped down, and she’s a keen observer of the human condition.
Someday, when we’re older, I′ll remember
Anna Tivel, The Humming
Summer on the roof, the apples falling from the tree
Reaching for each other in confused eternity
Reverence and wonder, emptiness and need
The arrangements are low-key, but Tivel’s songs are observant. ‘Hough Ave, 1966’ recalls the riots of 1966, while the title track looks for beauty in a fractured world.
Animal Poem is pretty and thoughtful.
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The Beths song is good, the other is okay.
Ubsurprisngly, 80smetalman enjoyed a song titled ‘Metal’.
Yep, that’s me.
The Beths are my favorite here. I included the title track of their latest album in a new music review at the time it came out back in late August. Anna Tivel is a new name. Not a bad song either.
Yup, i think I remember you covering them. I saw someone wearing a Beths t-shirt the other day, which is cool.
I’m thrilled Anna Tivel is on your music radar. I’m a big fan. I’ve interviewed her many times. She is a wonderful, thought human being.
Cool – did you like the latest one?
I really, really like the new album though maybe not as much as Small Believer or Outsiders.
There is not much by the Beths that I don’t like. I’ve gone over them quite a bit since I read this post Monday… I also read some interviews with her…this one is especially jangly…even ore than usual. There is a reason I special ordered an electric 12 sting out of California a few years ago…you cannot replicate that sound on anything else.
Anna Tivel sounds good…I like how sparse it is.
Yeah, I’m looking back at the marks I’ve given all The Beths albums, and wondering if I’ve overrated them – but they make really good records.
They really do. I appreciate them more now than I did when I first heard them. I need to post them again…it’s been a few years…and Metal would be the one.