Gather round Radio Caroline listeners and avid pop pickers, hip beat combo The Bees are back with their second LP, "Free The Bees". Groovy.
Cryogenically frozen alongside Austin Powers, The Bees are the living embodiment of the 60s Technicolor dream, presumably captured by agents of SPECTRA backstage at the original Isle of Wight Festival. It’s like punk never happened. Literally. Or maybe it didn’t. Wasn’t there a Beatle headlining Glastonbury? And hasn’t Brian Wilson got a new album out? Very confusing.
Anyway, assuming it is 2004, it feels like Doc Brown’s Delorean has transported The Bees back to the future to face the glare of the 21st century. To entertain them on their “trip” they’ve brought shades of early Buffalo Springfield, Donovan, The Kinks and Jefferson Airplane to act as prominent templates. Gerry And The Pacemakers and Spinal Tap’s early incarnation as the Flower People are worth bearing in mind too.
Like their contemporary peers The Beta Band, The Bees set their dial permanently off-kilter. Junk shop instrumentation wrapped-up in acoustic guitars and echoing Rickenbacker are all overshadowed by the album’s core - acres of over-dubbed vocals that reverb ad infinitum. Vocally it’s pleasing to the ear only because the depth of the mix tends to wash over you. It’s also bewildering, getting as good as Free’s Paul Rodgers yet worryingly close to Reef’s Gary Stringer all in the same song (“The Horseman”).
The melodies are mostly jaunty and the stoner harmonies solar-powered enough to lull around your brain but there’s no disguising the fact it’s a disappointingly one-dimensional record stuffed with half-baked ideas (“The Start”) and devoid of a single original thought.
"I Love You" is a great example - a gorgeously simple song but one you’ll probably find on the first Beatles anthology DVD if you look hard enough during the Hamburg episodes. And the less said about the shameful jive of "Chicken Payback" the better. You need one of their woolly hats to cover your ears.
Having said that, there’s much to enjoy if you advocate wholesome revisionism. Recent single "Wash In The Rain" sums up many of the positives of the sugar-coated Bees ethos and similarly, both "One Glass Of Water", which playfully chases its tail, and "Hourglass" have charm a plenty.
In the year that The Stands defined what it means to loot musical heritage, it’s hard to know whether to praise or pan The Bees. Oasis have regularly been slaughtered for using 60s equipment at Abbey Road yet The Bees have done exactly the same to generate an even greater period pastiche. Oh well, give me more crackle on my digital surround sound and LAUNCH is a convert. And book me on to the next flight to San Francisco while you’re at it.
