On The Beths" new album Expert In A Dying Field, Elizabeth Stokes" songwriting positions her somewhere between being a novelist and a documentarian. The songs collected here are autobiographical, but they"re also character sketches of relationships - platonic, familial, romantic - and more importantly, their aftermaths. The shapes and ghosts left in absences. The question that hangs in the air: what do you do with how intimately versed you"ve become in a person, once they"re gone from your life? The third LP from the New Zealand quartet houses 12 jewels of tight, guitar-heavy songs that worm their way into your head, an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz. With Expert, The Beths wanted to make an album meant to be experienced live, for both the listeners and themselves. They wanted it to be fun -- to hear, to play -- in spite of the prickling anxiety throughout the lyrics, the fear of change and struggle to cope.[info sheet from distr.]