The Bees: Free The Bees
Nick Southall, Stylus, 16 July 2004
FREE THE BEES FROM WHAT, exactly? The present? Debut album Sunshine Hit Me was an eccentric, eclectic affair, touched with jazz, funk, Portuguese folk, reggae and an easy, winning charm as expressed in sunny harmonies and breezy, nonsensical lyrics — imagine Gomez if they weren't hoary old (before their time) blues obsessives, The Beta Band without the mopes, a bar-band tribute to The Avalanches, and countless other nice things that seem like the memory of summer distilled into song and caught on tape. The effortlessness with which this Isle of Wight duo moved irreverently from genre to genre, whilst still maintaining a sense of personality and stylistic unity, was refreshing, and pointed towards a future of forward thinking, tuneful experimentalism.
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