SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

2021 NOISE-POP/SHOEGAZE/PSYCH

Entertainment, Death is the fourth album by the artsy band not the artsy movie The Spirit of the Beehive. I’ve been following their releases for several years now and honestly the reasons have been lackluster at best. They’re local to my area, so y’know, support your scene, and they have a cool name, that’s really it. The quality of their music has yet to be an incentive to listen. Their style prior to this falls between the areas of dream-pop and shoegaze, like indie with a constant psychedelic hue. It’s the worst sound to make mediocre music in, once it dips below the above average line it becomes a reverbed stew of forgettability, what’s happening in your ears should be engaging you but its not, the audience has to do work to be engaged and fuck its not easy.

Given all of this a fourth installment in this insipid saga appeared likely, but the journalistic buzz swirling around Entertainment, Death got me excited to listen, I was ready to be surprised. And it kind of does, they are still working with much the same sound and often dreadful songwriting but that’s injected with a few flavors of weird goodness. A collapse of noisy instrumentation, a blown-up sample, or some peculiar sounds bouncing around in the shadows of normality. On first listen I thought it was like oil and water, it seemed they were putting on an eccentric mask to cover up for the lack of compelling ideas. To be clear this take is much too harsh, but there is a kernel of truth in it, the juxtaposition of the thrillingly fucked up to lame is unusual. It opens at its cacophonous peak for the half-title track Entertainment.

An avalanche of haphazard percussion and howling electronics catch the listener off guard before a seamless transition to amicable indie stylings. But this is kept fresh with a cast of odd background characters, crunchy drums and warped vocal samples just to name two. The strange and the mundane are synthesized perfectly on There’s Nothing You Can’t Do, a contorted carnival ride. Unfamiliar yet nostalgic samples play from cloth covered speakers, femme vocals murmur through the crowd and goddamn its infectious. But as soon as the audience gets comfortable scuzzy bass craves a violent path to mangled screams. It’s a lot to take in at only three minutes long and it’s freaking wonderful. The vocals jump several steps forward in the mix on Wrong Circle. Deep blue waves of synths accompany autotuned crooning astonishingly, I suppose if you don’t bury them in reverb then autotune is the logical next step but the track goes nowhere, okay but half-baked. Bad Son is a good example of the quirky aspects trying their best to carry ordinary songwriting. It opens right to our singer having a near empty stage, instead of wrapping him in fog they let it stand out for terrible lyrics muttered with no rhythm.

How you wanna pass the time?
I know you wanna live so you can’t die
But no one knows my name, they don’t know why 

Distant chimes and static laced samples are just some of the great little accents here but the actual song it rides atop is bleh, then it has the gall to morph into a bad early Tame Impala impression of all things. Give Up Your Life gives up on trying to be interesting with its mass-produced guitar riff. Eventually the lifeless head bobbing is slathered in noise in a vain attempt to create intrigue, which accomplishes nothing. The appropriate titles continue on Rapid & Complete Recovery, a creative turn that immediately surprises with hand drumming that leads into woozy tropical vibes filtered through an old radio. I love it, even the synthetic horns, although it does linger around too long at its end when it’s stripped of all but a flat ambient hum. Echoes spill from every seam on The Server is Immersed. The guitar distortion whines and whir in typical fashion but it ends up boring, it feels like it was made to be part of one of those low risk, vibe out to the mainstream underground playlists.

It Might Take Some Time is pure tedium as the masculine vocals unattractively bleed together from one syllable to the next for the most generic song yet. The outro is another duel of their desire to be dull and their newfound weirdness. Glitched out instrumentation and pitch shifted vocals ride over soul-sucking monotone, groaning the track’s title ad nauseam. Old school psych breezes through with finger snapping action on Wake Up (In Rotation). It’s perfectly fine but not much else, the repetition of the chorus feels like it is aiming for catchy but falls short, landing somewhere in the realm of just pleasant. As you might guess I Suck The Devil’s Cock is awesome if uneven. Easily the longest of the listing comprising several interconnected vignettes starting with a demented jig as the effects pile on and the singing babbles in the barely coherent delirium. But it is brief, and leads into ambient metallic chatter, this wild fluctuation has me wondering what could be next on this acid trip and wouldn’t you know it’s more dreary dream-pop. At this point the frustration may begin to manifest in annoyed facial expressions and exacerbated hand gestures. The third movement is akin to the first, fast paced with circular computer bleeps, a large improvement. It bows out with warbling synths and vocals painting a positive image in the aftermath of chaos. 

So let your ego die
And burn up everything
You don’t need their help
You don’t need anything
You’re in control

Not gonna lie, it sounds a lot like The Flaming Lips but on the whole it’s still dope. We are finally greeted by the other half-title track Death. In a daze it flexes its fingers on an outstretched arm, colors shading the view. The rising notes with their mild middle-eastern vibe are a highlight of not just the song but the entire experience. Unfortunately it does open with prominent lyrics that are well, dumb.

This life is a party
So sweet it’s like candy
Melts in your head

It closes in an ominous fade with low hits of chimes reverberating softly, a fitting end to an abnormal album. Entertainment, Death is spotty, simultaneously a revelation and aberration. The songwriting much too often sucks the life out of every noise in its path, rendering the layers of fun oddities useless. There could be an amazing record here, despite all my criticism it’s close, if only the banal were not so banal.  

6/10

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