Unless you had your ear reasonably close to the ground around March of 2002, you probably missed the (Band of) Bees' Mercury Prize nominated debut album. Sunshine Hit Me brought together a wide range of influences and production techniques to create an album of Beta proportions with a strong South American and atmospheric sound. But pretty much everything that set the Bees apart from their contemporaries is nowhere to be heard here, aside from the Latin-kissed instrumental "The Russian," which remembers "No Trophy" and their cover of Os Mutantes' "A Minha Menina." It would seem, with their success in the U.K. in check, they decided to bank on the safe side for their follow-up. There is a lack of musical experimentation here, while the lyricism and basic song structure closely resembles that in Heroes To Zeroes (Beta Band). In lieu of messing around in the dark fringes of slightly bizarre café music, Free The Bees is a straight up rock album more in line with Iron Butterfly and the Small Faces than Morcheeba or Quantic. If the Coral, whose Magic And Medicine was almost entirely recorded in mono, present an aural amalgam of oldies AM radio, this is its FM counterpart, a love-fueled guitar romp through the flashback fields of psychedelia's golden age. Most of the tracks here sound very familiar, with a drum loop borrowed from here and a riff from there, while "This Is The Land" practically interprets "Tomorrow Never Knows." It is catchy and pleasing to hear, but it's not the Bees I'd come to know and love. The world already has one Shins so... I'll just have to quietly stew and hope they rediscover their roots for their next album.
1. These Are The Ghosts
2. Wash In The Rain
3. No Atmosphere
4. Horsemen
5. Chicken Payback
6. The Russian
7. I Love You
8. The Start
9. Hourglass
10. Go Karts
11. One Glass Of Water
12. This Is The Land
More about: The Bees
