The Spirit of the Beehive are great at creating their own weird little world. On their 2014 self-titled debut and 2015’s You Are Arrived (But You’ve Been Cheated) EP, the Philadelphia-based group painted in muddy watercolors and dreary smears.
Their third release, Pleasure Suck, is even more ambitious and chaotic, fine-tuning that evocative portraiture into songs that sound stormy and submerged. It opens with a far-off violin and tape warble, gradually morphing into a layer of dense noise and confusion that never lets up for the album’s runtime. But underneath their obfuscation are tight melodies and hooks; they just take a little while to become apparent. Once they’re under your skin, though, it’s hard to get them out, and Pleasure Suck is an immersive listen that…
…speaks to the talent of this enigmatic band.
“Like the classic 1973 Victor Erice film that shares and likely inspired its name, The Spirit of the Beehive has a way of juxtaposing the pretty with the messy, making taut songs that feel a little off-axis, with sudden, jagged-edged outbursts that come when you least expect them.” — NPR