by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
The ever mystical and unpredictable The Spirit of the Beehive love to defy expectations. They’ve always been a unique band but last year’s Pleasure Suck proved their aversion to complacency, an album that warped and shifted focus without warning mid song, one idea sputtering into the next, free of resolution but crammed with melodic charm that justified their exuberant need to shuffle in new directions. Set to release Hypnic Jerks this Friday, September 14th via Tiny Engines, the band are continuing to expand their sonic world with an uncompromising vision, stretching their limits into the great beyond and adopting an array of new tricks in the process. It’s a new horizon for the band, but the record is cohesive, with each idea given it’s space to become realized, the haze just thick enough for everything to blend together harmoniously.
“Hypnic Jerks,” the album’s title track, is about an anthemic as the Philadelphia quintet get, their nuanced lo-fi art rock taking a bold turn toward brash and discordant post-punk. Built on detached stabs of guitar and whirring keys, the song is both disjointed and eerily catchy, the dense bass groove working like crazy glue with the motorik drum pulse to keep everything together. The band swerve, break short, and do all they can to break away from the path, but with each additional layer, the song only propels itself further into their locked in bliss. It’s swollen pop at its core, and ever shimmering in it’s wavering structure.
Tour Dates:
10/2/2018 Easthampton, MA The Flywheel
10/3/2018 Rochester, NY Small World Books
10/4/2018 Toronto, ON The Garrison
10/5/2018 Kalamazoo, MI Bell’s Eccentric Cafe
10/6/2018 Chicago, IL Subterranean
10/7/2018 St. Louis, MO Duck Room at Blueberry Hill
10/9/2018 Denton, TX Dan’s Silverleaf
10/10/2018 Austin, TX Barracuda
10/11/2018 New Orleans, LA Gasa Gasa
10/12/2018 Nashville, TN The East Room
10/13/2018 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade – Purgatory
10/14/2018 Durham, NC The Pinhook
10/16/2018 Richmond, VA Strange Matter
10/17/2018 Washington, DC DC9
10/18/2018 Philadelphia, PA First Unitarian Church
10/19/2018 Brooklyn, NY Saint Vitus
10/25/2018 Cambridge, MA The Sinclair
The Spirit of the Beehive’s Hypnic Jerks is out September 14th via Tiny Engines.