The recording project of New York’s Sarabeth Weszely, Where’s Beth came onto our radar back in 2022 with the EP For My Mom & Other Lovers. Released via Pitch & Prose, the EP positioned itself somewhere between Joni Mitchell and Kimya Dawson to offer “sincerity underlined by a certain mischief” as we put it, striving to offer a more nuanced picture of life and love. More recently, single ‘Wide Eyes’ build upon these foundations, using piano to conjure a welcoming, wistful mood but ensuring that off-the-wall personality shone through too. “The track evokes the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Connie Converse,” we wrote, “embracing its idiosyncratic style with conviction and grace to create a sense of authenticity—be it considering the strange experience of loneliness even within a network of loving relationships, or pushing the metaphor of the cat to better convey the contradictions of living day to day.”
Where’s Beth is now back with debut full-length Bone Broth, and the album feels in many ways the full realisation of Weszely’s style. A picture of domesticity in the weeks and days around marriage to collaborator Jesse Thorson, the album is perhaps the most sincere Where’s Beth release to date, though for all its tender fondness, it still finds room for the peculiar and idiosyncratic details too. All of these moods are contained within the opening tracks. ‘Devotion’ lives up to its title with its bright clarity and softness, declaring love with a certain defiance, while ‘Quiet’ wears its doubts on its sleeve (“Am I selfish? Am I strange? Am I losing my way?” as Weszely ponders). Then there’s ‘I Am No Conqueror’, a romantic love song, yes, but one which mentions dogs sitting on heads during yoga and StarCraft’s platinum league.
What results is a picture a relationship with both its mundane details and luminous joy left intact. ‘If Only For This’ broaches the friction between religious beliefs and personal desire and ‘I Can’t Save All the Bees’ charts the intimate details of a hospital visit, while songs like ‘Close’ and ‘Lullaby’ paint a picture of closeness via space and lonely absences. As though to understand what it means to connect with another person only comes into relief in those moments apart. Sitting at the heart of the record, the title track brings all the threads together. A song earnest and soft and sometimes so odd as to be grotesque, its airy tones counterbalanced by a tactile strangeness which brings to life the twin threads of desire and dependency. “I keep the bones from what you eat inside my freezer,” Weszely sings, “to bring when you feel sick / you’ll come to me / and drink drink drink.”
Bone Broth is out now and available from the Where’s Beth Bandcamp page.
