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Aug 17, 2020In the here and now, with Jump Rope Gazers, they are bounding past their contemporaries.
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Jul 7, 2020The Beths have managed to create another overwhelmingly thrilling record. One in stunning communion with their debut but also distinctly its own creature.
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Jul 24, 2020While they sacrifice a little of the propulsive excitement of their debut, the tweaks to their sound deepen the emotional impact of this new set of songs.
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Jul 10, 2020The Beths utilize elements of their first LP on their sophomore effort—lyrical depth, catchy hooks, and sonic gems are scattered throughout the ten tracks on Jump Rope Gazers.
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Jul 10, 2020Jump Rope Gazers is crammed with fizzing indie-pop tunes, and not unlike Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell or Alvvays’ Molly Rankin, Stokes has an innate talent for crafting beautiful bittersweet effervescent indie guitar pop. The Beths take the chiming indie template and energize it, infusing it with their own personality and sly wit.
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Jul 9, 2020Fans of Future Me Hates Me will be more than pleased with Jump Rope Gazers, their latest album. Every one of their back catalog's strengths is not only present but amplified.
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Jul 9, 2020Filled with bouncy riffs, sweet harmonies, anxiety, and kindness, Jump Rope Gazers confirms that the Beths are good at slower, more reflective songs, too, though there's plenty of spark to carry listeners through.
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Jul 9, 2020With it, The Beths find their most focused sound yet in the midst of uncertainty.
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Jul 8, 2020Quiet or not, and despite the jazz-trained musicianship on display, Pearce’s production never buries the vocals—Stokes’ or anyone else’s for that matter. In The Beths’ case, their most valuable instruments are the ones they were born with—and that shines through every step of the way.
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Jul 7, 2020With Jump Rope Gazers, the Beths — Stokes, Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair and drummer Tristan Deck — prove that despite a global pandemic, it’s still possible to have a good time. They might not be excited, but we sure are.
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MojoJul 7, 2020No wheels were reinvented in the making of this record, but it travels straight to the heart nevertheless. [Aug 2020, p.92]
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Jul 7, 2020While there's an overall sense of reining in and refining on Jump Rope Gazers that keeps it from reaching the giddiest heights of its predecessor, the band sounds just as good in this mode as the other, just a little different.
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Jul 10, 2020The songs on Jump Rope Gazers aren’t as immediately addictive as what came before, but The Beths’ natural intuition for emotive and melodic writing is still intact.
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Jul 9, 2020With Jump Rope Gazers, The Beths add new layers to the sound they began establishing two years ago, and those layers are as touching as they are revealing.
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UncutJul 7, 2020Ultimately, it's an album rooted in the constant collision of rock and pop. [Aug 2020, p.27]
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Jul 7, 2020Songs like “Dying to Believe” and “Out of Sight” keep this energy going, with drummer Tristan Deck and bassist Benjamin Sinclair maintaining a brisk rhythm section as Stokes and Jonathan Pearce’s guitars shimmer, groove, and ignite in equal measure. But the Beths are, perhaps, at their best when they’re at their breeziest.
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Jul 13, 2020Tidbits keep the sense of fun in The Beths’ music, they aren’t enough to fully invigorate their second album among the more sluggish songs. They’re mostly a reminder of what’s missing.
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Jul 13, 2020It’s an album that Beths fans will doubtless like very much, and it offers a strong mission statement to the future that this is a band hungry to expand and determined to explore the hitherto untrodden ground. It’s just a shame that, on this project alone, they’ve not delivered anything of career-defining merit.
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Jul 10, 2020The irony of ‘Jump Rope Gazers’ is that as The Beths push themselves to do something different for album number two, they actually end up with the sonic sameness that the first record miraculously avoided. Only now do they sound like they could just be any other band.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 15
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Mixed: 2 out of 15
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Negative: 1 out of 15
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Apr 14, 2023
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Jul 11, 2020
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Jul 10, 2020Beautiful, expertly crafted pop. More varied and introspective than their last album, but just as great. Love it!