This week I’m covering newish albums by SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, CHVCHRES, and (breaking the all-caps theme) Circle of Sighs. These bands need no introduction! But I wrote one anyway! Rebellious.

SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE – ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH
(April 9, 2021)

SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE is a band who named themselves after some 1973 Spanish film called The Spirit of the Beehive, and then they decided to put their band name in all caps for scream reasons. They seem to make cryptic, lo-fi experimental pop-adjacent music in the same vein as Ariel Pink or Laurel Halo or Liars, bordering on the aesthetics of the old school industrial acts of Throbbing Gristle.

This should be right up my alley, and I chalked it up to just difficulty of the music at first, but I’ve listened to ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH about six times and I don’t have anything to take away from it. Nothing has gelled, I have no a-ha moments, I’m just a little frustrated. The tracks feel like you’re listening to a car radio on a lonely desert road, and the radio keeps kind of fading in and out of various stations. ACTUALLY, you know what this reminds me of? The sample-heavy experimental collages of Negativland, which was a project also marred by very spotty consistency.

The band seems to be throwing ideas at a wall to see what sticks, which is fine if a lot of it actually sticks. I don’t feel any immediacy here, or even a strong message or theme to extract or focus on. No point in getting too deep into individual songs, the point of the album as a whole is to enjoy the dreamy, psychedelic vibe. Songs ebb and flow into one another, almost making the progression seem like more of a hazy swirl than a linear timeline, especially with the heavy sampling serving as buffers between tracks.

I would have been all over this kind of aimless Ariel Pink or The Books-style hypnagogic pop 10-15 years ago, but, like the rest of the indiesphere, I’ve kind of moved past hypnagogic pop. This feels very much like an album that should’ve been made in 2011, and it’s weird to hear something like this in this post-Trump pandemic hellhole we find ourselves in. Maybe it just hits too close to home and makes me pine for a simpler era. FROWN.

Early Verdict:

CHVRCHES – Screen Violence
(August 27, 2021)

CHVRCHES make the kind of synth-slathered, sweetly female-voiced pop music that makes people my age tear up with nostalgia over prom dates and John Hughes movies. They did that kind of thing with with their first three albums of bouncy, synthy happiness. They shift gears ever so slightly this time with Screen Violence, their horror album!

And even then, it’s not too different from their usual formula if you’re not paying that much attention. Loaded with hooks as always, and peppy and cheerful on the surface, the horror (and sadness, and disillusionment, and fear) concept of the album stays mostly within the lyrics rather than the music. For my money, the two strongest tracks are the lead single “He Said, She Said” and the slightly melancholy pop-ballad “Good Girls”, which both deal with sexism. Lauren Mayberry had this to say about the former per an interview with Rolling Stone: “Being a woman is fucking exhausting and it felt better to scream it into a pop song than scream it into the void.” It’s very lyrically straightforward, with the verses aping the words of what seems like an emotionally abusive partner and a chorus that repeats “I feel like I’m losing my mind” (and then echoed using some tasteful autotune). It’s the best song on the record.

CHVRCHES is at it’s best when Mayberry unleashes some of her pent up vitriol, and since it’s happening more and more as time goes on I’m looking quite forward to what’s to come in the future.

Early Verdict:

Circle of Sighs – Narci
(June 4, 2021)

Boy, this Circle of Sighs album sure sounds weird. Let’s look them up…doo doo doo…aha, “Occult-themed synth-doom metal”. OK, I suppose so. Other than that, there’s not much to find. Anonymous on purpose, I don’t even know what country they’re based out of. And, to compound the mystery, it’s really hard to categorize this music succinctly. Prog? Industrial? Metal? Who knows.

Diversity of Narci on a song-by-song basis is surprising. I could write thousands of words about what other music comes to mind when listening to this album. “Spectral Arms” is a 10-minute sprawling and moody piece that refrains a piano section that reminds me of the more pretty, ambient tunes on (of all things) the Metroid Prime soundtrack! Then, when you think you’ve got the band’s sound nailed down in your head, the very next track “We Need Legends” is a slab of bizarrly trippy, funky synths and industrial noises. It’s like a cut from a completely different album, and THIS reminds me of something that would result from a collaboration between Genesis P-Orridge and Steven Wilson! Psychic TV and Porcupine Tree! Can ya feel it?? Anyone?? Hello?! Anyway, “We Need Legends” also reminds me of video game music, maybe for a dystopian futuristic sci-fi romp. Video game soundtracks likely influenced their approach.

Other notable tracks include the unsettling and ethereal “Roses Blue”, which reminds of the deliberate avantgarde creepiness of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum or the psychedelic electro-industrial moodiness of the Legendary Pink Dots, and the finale “The Man Who Sold the Wind”, which mixes neo-prog and Pink Floydian guitars with more industrial electronics.

Give me an album full of strange shit and I’m a happy guy. You can tell the musicians behind Circle of Sighs are very competent and thoughtful songwriters who aren’t afraid to incorporate each member’s varied musical tastes. They’re probably all insufferable art school students.

Early Verdict: