There’s always been a strong vein of hopelessness running through Spirit of the Beehive’s work. The Philadelphia trio’s 2018 album Hypnic Jerks was tinted by nostalgia that was punctuated by nightmares, while their 2021 follow-up ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH yearned for mindless escape but was overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of consumerism. Their new album You’ll Have To Lose Something gets more personal, digging deeper into both flesh and psyche by exploring the depression and isolation that sets in after a tough break up – in this case the one that happened between band members Zack Schwartz and Rivke Ravede.
They started the emotional excavation of heartbreak on last year’s i’m so lucky EP, but the new full length gives them more space to express the defeating feelings through their signature psychedelic pop collages. Spirit Of The Beehive report that they tried to create something with “less hard left turns” and “intentionally less antagonistic” with You’ll Have To Lose Something, but the chance of becoming disoriented amidst their maelstrom sounds and styles is still very high, especially on first listen. However, this sense of being unexpectedly bombarded from all sides only emphasises the confusion and disconnection they’re trying to transmit.
The feeling of being in the middle of a torrent of conflict is also accentuated by the fact that all three members – Schwartz, Ravede and Corey Wichlin – contribute vocally, often within the same song. On this album, they pull additional voices into the mix including a Japanese City Pop sample and guest vocalist DeeDee of MSPAINT. Despite layering in all these voices, ideas and sounds, the marvel of Spirit of the Beehive is that it all comes together into a uniquely unpredictable, but hive-mind like whole.
On this album, with three lots of existential angst combining into one outlet, the result is heavy. DeeDee shows up on opening track “The Disruption”, trying to shout through the fog of apathy by yelling: “Break the spell / Disenchant all the evil in your head / Rectify existential dread, you do not fear the dead” – but it’s no use, Spirit of the Beehive are committed to exploring their angst to its fullest.
Ostensibly, it could be argued that You’ll Have To Lose Something is the band’s most beautiful album. It features prominent synth breakdowns like hallucinogenic daydreams and synthesized or sampled string arrangements that provide respite from the more charged, tense sections. But sampling any of the lyrical content of the record leaves you in no doubt of the pain and turmoil being carried in their hearts.
Take, for example, “Let The Virgin Drive”, where the aforementioned City Pop sample (of Tatsuro Yamashita’s “Your Eyes”) and a cotton candy synth melody create a distinctly amorous production, but this is contrasted with lyrics about girls trapped in basements and a harrowing clip of someone screaming “somebody help me!”. They pull of this sweet-but-psychotic combination again later in taut jangle rocker “I’ve Been Evil”, which couples glowing guitar with sighing thoughts like “A buddy brought a gun to work / Says he’s gonna use it once / I wonder how close we are”.
Even the album’s most overtly beautiful, neo-ballad tracks can’t escape the shadow of desolation. “Found A Body” is a gorgeously floating piece with sky-searching guitars, but still finds bandmates trading lines like “You pay the toll, a final act / A curtain call, a spineless hack”. Sampled strings and horns interwoven with sparkling synths give “Sun Swept The Evening Red” a regal sprightliness and autumnal glow, but the warmth feels chilly when it’s iced with lines like “Seasons take a toll to watch it all end in tragedy and whimpering on”; even if comprehending the words is difficult, the lumpen feeling behind them is deadly as lead poisoning. On “1/500” genuinely hopeful lines like the earnestly sung “I have a love that is on my mind and it feels like everyone” are trampled on by other voices jibing from the back of the mind “Feels like the waiting, how pathetic, it’s a car crash”.
The effect of juxtaposing these welcoming melodies with blackly nihilistic sentiment is not only unsettling, it actually makes the pessimism more potent. It’s as though the minds stuck inside these songs know that beauty is out there on the other side of the glass, but they’re stuck struggling under the weight of their incapacitating depression.
Then there are the moments that are pure dread, which Spirit of the Beehive masterfully amplify through their layering. “The Cut Depicts The Cut” features a skittering drum and samples being shredded in the background as Ravede contends with “patterns repeating and nothing left to eat inside the kitchen”. Her numbness, augmented by the cold aural surroundings, leads her to contemplate the degreaser kept under the sink as an option for escape – “hunger makes a menace of us all”. The haunting penultimate track “Duplicate Spotted” finds the trio diving headlong into hopelessness, deflating horns and crunching guitar riffs soundtracking the descent which concludes in Rivke admitting “God pulls the trigger / I load the gun”.
This sets up perfectly for the album’s closing sentiment “Earth Kit”. Here, after all the negativity and dejection, Spirit of the Beehive unsurprisingly find themselves alone and helpless. Grandiose strings underscore the admission “I don’t wanna live no more / not if I have to speak” and the self-hating sentiment “You’ll never get close to me / You’ll have to lose something”. But then, at the last moment of the album, a realisation – perhaps too late – of a need for love and connection: “What if I need people?”
You may be wondering why you’d ever want to listen to an album that is so overrun with desperation, which is a somewhat valid concern. But there is an alchemy to what Spirit of the Beehive do in their unique sonic approach that makes their depressive messages not feel self-pitying, but genuinely human. The way they stitch together samples and layer contrasting tones resonates with the overwhelming all-the-time-ness of modern existence. They conjure the aural equivalent of sitting in front of the TV late at night flicking aimlessly through channels while your mind whirrs around obsessive thoughts – but they make it seem melancholically romantic. In Spirit of the Beehive’s music, the lives of millions of average, unremarkable people is represented and amplified. They make no attempt to make us feel better about ourselves – they simply make us feel seen.
