REVIEWED: Beekeeper “Shout at People”
In
this day and age I think its kind of a rare and pleasant experience to
be genuinely confused by an album. For anyone that shares this
sentiment, I’d strongly recommend sitting down and listening to
Vancouver rock trio Beekeeper’s latest EP Shout at People (a title that like so much of the band is perfectly suiting in the oddest of ways) from start to finish.
This
EP sporadically jumps between genres faster than a squirrel trapped in a
shoebox, and although it runs the risk of sounding disjointed, I would
argue that it works out in the band’s favor. Starting off with “Bees” I
was more or less in familiar territory: sort of a Unicorns meets Queen
kind of vibe with an instrumentation that could have been pulled from a
Russian circus. Then, moving on to the second track “It’s the Blood,”
the band suddenly pulls a few musical backflips, landing somewhere in
the realm of late 90’s power pop (with some dark around the edges).
After
about the halfway point of “It’s the Blood” right up until the end of
the EP, all hell breaks loose. The music gets progressively darker (and
cheeky), with grungy breakdowns, driving guitars and bass lines, and
unusual time signatures mixed with honest, angst-ridden lyrics. And
then, all of a sudden in the middle of “Oh Hi!” you get a happy little
country breakdown featuring a kazoo. That’s right, a fucking kazoo.
Maybe I’m alone in this thought but I could do for a whole lot more
kazoos in contemporary music.
Overall, Shout at People
is a perfect album for anyone feeling a little bored with modern indie
music (especially if you’re looking to reconnect with some of that
leftover teenage angst). It’s quirky and odd in the same vein as a Wes
Anderson movie, and provides considerable musicianship without the
downfall of taking itself too seriously. It’s definitely not for
everyone and can be a little confusing, but I’ve always been of the mind
that a little confusion is good once in a while.
I give it eight kazoo solos out of ten.
- Rowan Swain
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