In January 2023, as flash floods hit Auckland, New Zealand, Oakley Creek was destroyed: trees upturned, bridges ripped out and dragged downstream, the riverbank collapsed. Like many locals, Liz Stokes, songwriter and guitarist in indie four-piece the Beths, had walked there often during the pandemic. “It’s jarring to see this place that’s never going to be the way it was, the way you remembered it,” she says over video in late June.
She catches herself. “I say the creek was destroyed, but the creek did the destroying also. It’s just nature. It was interesting seeing change happen very quickly in real time.”
