The Beths announce live album and concert film, ‘Auckland, New Zealand, 2020’
New Zealand pop-rock outfit The Beths have announced their debut live album and concert film, titled ‘Auckland, New Zealand, 2020’.
The 16-track release was recorded at a one-off headline show The Beths played at the Auckland Town Hall last November. There, the band played to one of their biggest hometown crowds to date (the venue’s average capacity is 1,500).
The show was also livestreamed to fans outside of New Zealand, but a proper recording of it has not been made available until now.
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As an album, ‘Auckland, New Zealand, 2020’ is set for release on September 17 via Carpark Records / Dew Process, landing on CD and a two-disc vinyl set. The film, directed by longtime collaborators Annabel Kean and Callum Devlin (aka Sports Team), will land on the same day as a digital exclusive, streaming on both Apple TV+ and Vimeo.
Alongside today’s (August 11) announcement, the band shared lead single ‘Future Me Hates Me’ – also the title track of their 2018 debut album – and a trailer for the concert film. Take a look at both below:
“Watching the film for the first time brought back all the emotions of 2020 for us,” frontwoman Elizabeth Stokes said in a statement.
“Sports Team have done such an amazing job of capturing the mix of anxiety and simple joy that was touring music in NZ at the time. We are so grateful that it happened, and grateful to have it documented with so much love and care.”
The Beths released their second album, ‘Jump Rope Gazers’, last July. It was flanked by a suite of singles including the title track, ‘Mars, The God Of War’, ‘Out Of Sight’, ‘I’m Not Getting Excited’ and ‘Dying To Believe’ – all of which make an appearance on on ‘Auckland, New Zealand, 2020’.
Speaking to NME upon its release, Stokes said the tracklisting for ‘Jump Rope Gazers’ came together naturally by proxy of the band’s enjoyment of the songs. “The bond between these songs is we loved playing them straight away,” she said.
“There were a few half-finished songs, and could’ve really gone either way. Some of them just ended up ruling, so we pushed to finish those. Others we tried to fix and really work on, and they just never settled in. We just went song by song until we ended up with ten.”
Postponed from its original kickoff back in June, the band are set to tour Australia this November, taking to the stage for two shows each in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne with local indie-pop artist Hachiku.