The Bees
Album by Frog Eyes
Released 29 April 2022
Psychedelic / Indie Rock
Label – Paper Bag
Rating – 7/10
The Bees weirds it up like no other.
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Unretired, Frog Eyes are back and weirder than ever. The British Columbian band’s preternatural tenure is already littered with comebacks – 2015’s Pickpocket’s Locket, a personal favourite of mine, was released after lead vocalist Carey Mercer’s fight with throat cancer and subsequent recovery – but The Bees reshapes the band, now ten albums deep, by revitalising their quirks.
“I felt my second body upon the track; screws, picks and thorns”. Mercer’s hip-swinging brio laughs and haunts its way into He’s a Lonely Song; the instrumental, lawned by minimalist guitars and other mild takes on garage band indie, offers its own silliness, like abstract stop-motion, but The Bees appears to be a vessel for Mercer to carry himself atop, sneering at any other potential weirdness as he pimps his own.
This is a well-developed idiosyncrasy, like an underground organisation you didn’t realise had been doing business for so long, which is essentially what Frog Eyes is. It’s a learned exercise in chemistry set up by performer and the music they vibrate to; Mercer has learned how to unzip himself from Frog Eyes’ sound whilst occasionally re-cosying up to its grooves, more-so on When You Turn on the Light and I Was an Oligarch, suggesting opposite ends of the ADHD spectrum; the former slacker-ish, Pavement-esque if it weren’t for Mercer’s bombast, the latter frantically post-punk.
I can’t quite put my finger on the source material of Mercer’s embellishments. They’re likely his own, but partially remind of Richard Thompson with a few more screws loose, and Future Islands’ Samuel Herring. Their unpredictability provides the album its identity, while the instrumentals guide; see how affectionate the simplicity of Scottish Wine is – Frog Eyes have done this before, but rarely with such cuteness.
But much of the appeal is not a cuteness, but a projection of swampy smut, the kind of murk any good psych outfit loves carving some humour out of. Rainbow Stew accounts gritty diligence in all its vividity – “I cook all day long / I watch Rainbow Stew” – over a deliberating tone with absurd inflections, like a Wes Anderson script. Mercer talks and talks, sings and sings, with so much absurdism that later indie-riffic songs like A Rhyme for the Star feel a little less worth it.
Even if the cuts that gather tropes or ditch uniqueness evoke groans, the groans are a lot fewer than they were on pre-disbandment album Violet Psalms. And when Frog Eyes run out of ideas, they’ll borrow a few from psychedelic rock’s nutty past, see how Here is a Place to Stop almost resembles The Animals’ version of House of the Rising Sun.
Otherwise, the ideas mount, finding a summit on the epic title track. Its design is a baffling bafflement that’ll keep even those too hipster-y for Nuggets on their toes. The framework warps – is it synthpop? Is it lean, freeform psychedelia? Is it simply a soap box on which Mercer may recite his Carey 3:16 allocutions? Whatever it is, it lasts eight minutes.
But it’s time to stop the guesswork and simply enjoy the return of Frog Eyes. Serene landscapes poured through past works as Carey Mercer’s roars shone, but The Bees is primarily a bombardment of weird; something is sure to freak out on every song. It’s not the perfect psychedelic rock experience, but The Bees is madder than a box of frog eyes, and that’s most important.
Best track – Rainbow Stew.
Weakest track – A Rhyme for the Star.
Rating – 7 out of 10
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