THE BETHS
"Straight Line Was a Lie" on World Cafe Live
The Beths has always been a band with rules. You know, no synthesizers, no tempos below X [...] everyone sings and plays at the same time. This structure has always been part of what we do [...] The structure facilitates the creative side.
They’re cat dads. When they got their first appartement, the first thing they did was to get a cat, he's a male. They named it The Lorax. Then after a few months they decided to get a second one, a female, they named it Willow.
What a surprise it was for Wille and Simon when they noticed that Willow was pregnant, a few months later. They looked at Lorax like this “🤨”
Their suspicions were right when Willow gave birth and the kitten (a female) turned out to look like this. So now, to both their happiness and despair, they had 3 cats. They named the kitten Olive. So yeah, at 22ish years old, they were already a family of 5 lol
Then, they got married at 25/26 and ofc their cats HAD to be there. Maddie and Felice made sure that the cats were dressed appropriately for the event: The Lorax wore a bow around his neck like this, Willow wore a flower crown on her head and Olive wore pink bows on her ears.
A few years after they got married, in their late twenties/early thirties, they wanted to have children. And their two bedroom apartment wasn’t gonna do the job, so they moved in a new house. I would see them living in a house a like this.
They immediately loved it at first glance. It’s a 3 stories house (basement, ground floor and first floor). 3 bedrooms in the first floor and 1 in the basement.
There is an inground swimming pool in the backyard.
As I said in one of my headcanons, they have 3 children in total. The 2 oldest by surrogacy/egg donor and the youngest by adoption.
When they chose a surrogate/egg donor, they made sure she looked like at least one of them. And they got quite the jackpot because Maria (let’s call her that because I don’t wanna keep writing surrogate the whole time) looks like Simon but with some features that ressemble Wille, like her nose and the same hazel eyes. She’s a beautiful Venezuelan woman with the same tan skin as Simon, curly hair and plump lips.
For their first child, they took a sample of Wilhelm’s spermatozoid (Idk the process of surrogacy/egg donor, sorry). The baby ended up being a girl, they named her Sofia Linda Eriksson. Sofia doesn’t have a lot of Maria’s melanin. She looks like Wille but with curly blond hair (let’s imagine Ludvig was a blond) and the same hazel eyes as him and Maria. She has anxiety like Wille too and he helps her to cope with it and to find great ways to relax. Sofia is the eldest kid by 2 years between her and Valentina, and 3 years between her and Ben.
Their second child was made with Simon’s spermatozoid this time. It turned out to be another girl and Wille and Simon couldn’t be happier. They named her Valentina Pilár Eriksson. She is literally Simon’s twin. She’s just like him, physically and emotionally. The same tan skin with long curly hair.
Simon raised the girls to never be insecure about their hair or ethnical background and to be proud about who she is.
Eventually, they wanted another kid but Maria was already pregnant of her own husband, so they decided to take a different approach on this one. They went to the orphanage and were immediately smitten over a 4 years old boy. The orphanage told them that he was originally from Greece but moved to Sweden with his mom when he was still a baby. Unfortunately, a lot of things happened and she couldn’t afford having him anymore so she gave him up to this orphanage.
His name is Benjamin Niko Bouras. He’s White with curly brown hair. He’s a shy kid and it took him a while to get accustomed to Wille and Simon visiting him at the orphanage, but eventually he warmed up to them.
They prepared everything at home for him. They moved Valentina’s things to Sofia’s bedroom so they could share a room and Ben could take Valentina’s. The girls were more than happy to share, it meant more playtime to them.
When they took him home for the first time and he met Sofia and Valentina, he was really shy to interact with them and would only stay with Simon, Wille or play with the cats.
Wille and Simon quickly picked up on his separation anxiety. Ben didn’t want to sleep in his own bed and always ended up sneaking in his parents’ bed. He hated going to daycare and had full on meltdowns when they’d try to take him there. So eventually, Simon and Wille decided to keep him home if they could.
Ben didn’t like to talk a lot, he preferred to communicate in signs and squeaks. It worried Wilhelm a lot that his kid wasn’t behaving like other kids his age, but Simon recognized this behavior…
It took them a few months before Ben was officially diagnosed with autism. He wasn’t really severe in the spectrum and the doctors assured them that with some speech therapy, Ben would talk more. And they were right, because slowly, Benjamin was more loud. He spoke out loud his wants to his parents. He only stops talking when he’s around people he doesn’t know or isn’t used to.
Ben also hates sudden loud noises and hides somewhere whenever he hears one. The first time it happened was during Sofia’s birthday party and 2 balloons popped back to back. Wille looked for Ben in every room of the house, his heart was pounding in his chest with anxiety. Until, when he was in his own bedroom and heard a small squeak sound he recognized coming from inside the closet. He opened the closet door and found his son crying, his knees to his chest and his hands on his ears, shaking from fear. He sat beside Benjamin and comforted him for as long as he needed until they had to go back downstairs for Sofia’s birthday. Benjamin stayed in Wille’s arms the rest of the evening.
One day, Wille was filming Simon and Benjamin interracting and playing together, when Ben called them both Dad and Papa for the first time since he started speech therapy. So he has on tape, Simon crying of happiness while giving their son the biggest hug.
Valentina and Sofia always include their little brother in their games. When they play princesses, he's the knight or the dragon king. When they have tea parties, he's always invited.
They call him Little Ben <3
Ben’s special interest are dragons. His bedroom theme is dragons, his birthday cake is always decorated with dragons and he has a collection of dragons figurines. His favorite show is How to train your Dragon. As he grew up, he started having math as another special interest. It fascinates him how math and numbers can be involved in anything.
When Ben was 12 years old, his parents started giving him more independence, like his sisters, and trusted him to go out by himself. He didn’t go anywhere too far and was always in the same spots: either at his friends’ house, the park or running errands for his parents. But his favorite places in the entire world (his words) is the local library and the bookstore around the corner. He absolutely loves reading because it allows him to explore other worlds in the comfort of his bedroom. His favorite genres are fantasy, science-fiction and of course math. Wilhelm installed library shelves for him to organize his books
When the kids were teenagers, Valentina and Sofia spoke out on their needs of privacy and sharing a room wasn’t for them anymore. So, Wille and Simon gave Sofia the guest room in the basement. She loved it because it was like she had her own appartement, she could now decorate the room how she wanted without her sister’s opinion.
Valentina is a really girly girl meanwhile Sofia more or less interested in those things.
Sofia like purple, Valentina is the pink sister, and Benjamin likes green. There was one Halloween where Simon and Wille dressed them as the chipmunks.
Sofia didn’t want a big quince, she only wanted to go out to eat with her friends and family somewhere.
Meanwhile, Valentina’s quinceanera was really big and really expensive. It was pink themed and she had her bestfriends and her sister as her damas. Benjamin and her few guy friends were her chamberlands.
Sofia plays soccer, Valentina plays volleyball and is a cheerleader at her high school, Ben is in the math club and student council.
Sofia did a lot of sports growing up but her favorite is soccer. Her aunt Rosh is really proud of her for it and gives her tips on soccer.
At first, Valentina hated sports, just like her papa. But eventually she began to like playing volleyball and played it for a few years. But meanwhile, she fell in love with cheer so she quit volleyball for it. She’s a flyer on her team
I see Ben being a math genius, like he’s a walking calculator. He participated in a lot of math competitions as he grew up and always ended up winning or at least on the podium, while his family cheered for him in the stands. He has a lot of math trophies in his room. He hates physical sports, he prefers the mind sports like chess, cards, Go and being a mathlete.
But everyone has their flaws right? Sofia is never bothered. Like to the point where she doesn’t care about a lot of things and it can cause harm to people around her, because she’s not that empathetic. Valentina can be really petty. Meanwhile, Ben can be really selfish and he can say some pretty mean things sometimes without realizing. He doesn’t understand that some things aren’t meant to be said out loud and it got him in trouble at school a few times
Linda often comes to visit them and see her grandkids. She often brings them gifts or money, to Wilhelm and Simon’s despair because they think she’s spoiling the kids too much. So instead, you know how grandmas secretly gives money to their grandchildren like they be drug dealers or something? That’s Linda lmao. She goes into their room to give money to them and say “Don’t tell your parents” before leaving.
They spent Thanksgiving at Linda’s house and she cooks A TON of food. Like, there is a lot of leftovers.
Meanwhile, Wilhelm’s relationship with his parents has healed overtime. Kristina and Ludvig come to visit sometimes and they get to know their grandkids and Simon.
When they were younger, Valentina and Sofia were sooo happy to discover that they’re basically real princesses. Well, they’re not since Wille abdicated but he let them believe that they were.
Simon talks to the kids in Spanish so they can know their heritage. He speaks Spanish to Benjamin too so he doesn’t feel left out. So technically, everyone in the household knows Spanish. The 3 kids + Simon speak it meanwhile Wilhelm understands it really well but isn’t confident enough to speak it.
Most of the time, Simon cooks and Wille cleans.
Simon is the spider-killer of the household because Wille and the kids are all afraid of spiders. Particularly Valentina, like don’t even talk about them while she’s there because she’ll throw a fit. They’re called the “s word” in the family.
They have family board games nights almost every Friday and it’s so funny and entertaining. Valentina and Simon cheat in every game, Ben gets upset because they won’t play by the rules, Sofia flipped over the monopoly game because she was mad of always being the first one to go bankrupt, while Wille tries to keep everyone at peace (he fails lol)
New Zealand indie-rock outfit the Beths’ North American tour came through the East Village, with an upbeat, energetic show at a rapt Webster Hall on Wednesday night.
(The Beths play Underground Arts in Philadelphia tonight.)
(The Beths play the Royale in Boston on Saturday.)
Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @TobyTenenbaum
The Beths’ Future Me Hates Me was one of our favorite albums of 2018. When we interviewed lead vocalist and guitarist Elizabeth Stokes and vocalist/guitarist Jonathan Pearce about it, the band was entrenched in the Auckland music scene and at the point where they could still get away with playing at some DIY venues when touring. Many headline tours and high-profile opening slots later, with music being the band’s full-time job, Stokes and company wrestle with the social price of all that hard work, time spent away from home and friends, on their upcoming album Jump Rope Gazers, out in July via Carpark. So far, the band’s released the album’s first two tracks: opener “I’m Not Getting Excited”, a fuzzy pop song where Stokes’ inner voice tells her to temper her expectations associated with success, and “Dying To Believe”, the band’s typical picture-perfect pop tones combined with Stokes’ reflection, vulnerability, and anxiety. “I’m sorry for the way that I can’t hold conversations / They’re such a fragile thing to try to support the weight of,” she sings, clarifying, “It’s not that I don’t think that my point of view is valid / It’s just that I can’t stand the sound of my own patterns / They always look backwards from the way that I imagine.” She’s always been head-on even with abstract concepts of self, and never so much as here.
Where Jump Rope Gazers is a big leap from Future Me Hates Me is instrumentally. The band’s power pop, chugging, distorted guitar riffs drive “Acrid” and “Don’t Go Away”, while there’s a sense of spacious nostalgia and melancholy to the lovelorn, dreamy title track, breezy, strummed, and shimmering “Do You Want Me Now”, and acoustic “You Are a Beam of Light”. And “Out of Sight” is the first Beths song with bonafide pop punk instrumentation, stellar guitar solos and limber drum fills setting them fittingly alongside the other #RiotFestAtHome bands. Ultimately, what should shine through during their Facebook live stream tonight at 7 PM CST are Stokes’ words. There’s always a sense of magic to the more positive and devotional words--“I keep a flame burning inside if you need to bum a light,” she sings on “Out of Sight”--though her best lines are always hilariously grounded. On the title track, she sings, “I’ve never been the dramatic type / But if I don’t see your face tonight / I...well, I guess I’ll be fine.” A quarantine anthem if there ever was one.
