She Keeps Bees
She Keeps Bees
Eight Houses
(BB Island)
Still keeping to the shadows, Brooklyn's best-kept musical secret return with their fourth studio album, and for the first time the duo of singer-guitarist Jessica Larrabee and drummer Andy LaPlant welcomes a producer and a couple of musical helpmates, singer Sharon Van Etten and jazz-orientated multi-instrumentalist Adam Schatz. As a result, the sound is fuller, with the skeleton blues that drew so many White Stripes/PJ Harvey comparisons eked out now by horn parts (used to best effect on Owl, which also features Van Etten) and moody organ flurries. At times it sounds like The Doors in full-on shaman mode, at others like Black Sabbath at their War Pigs sludgiest - though in Larrabee's understanding that silence and space are powerful musical tools, I'm reminded too of The XX, particularly on closing track Is What It Is. On top of all that sit Larrabee's mystical lyrics - the plight of Native American Indians are the subject of one song - delivered in her languid, honeyed voice. A towering album from a band that just keep getting better.
Barry Didcock
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