Spectreview: Spirit of the Beehive – ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH

Released: April 9, 2021

Experimental Rock
(Hypnagogic Pop)
(Noise Pop)

-LIGHT CORAL-

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“I remember the promise of a future
Could it all be in my head?”

Despite the madcap nature of their records, Spirit of the Beehive are not inscrutable. Their ethos is plainly spoken on the opening track of their 2017 LP in lyrics that, for once, are not obfuscated by sound. “Pleasure sucks the life out of everyone.”

In this way, ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH feels like a companion piece to their 2018 quasi-breakthrough, Hypnic Jerks (and not just capitalization-wise). On that record, the Philly DIY band upgraded the production values and refocused their efforts into something edging toward hypnagogic pop. It had its eerie moments, but now it sounds positively bucolic by comparison. Their newest, on the other hand, ripples with anxiety and constantly threatens to descend into madness. Not a quiescent moment passes that isn’t eventually interrupted by a discordant note, or a stomach-dropping bend of the whammy bar, or a blast of abrasive noise. The drugs, it seems, have stopped working.

While there’s nothing as immediately catchy or accessible as Hypnic Jerks’ best, ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH is an altogether more impressive record. It’s a cohesive experience that’s bound together both aesthetically and conceptually, the druggy atmosphere playing a more cerebrally-meaningful role than ever before. Its track titles pointedly promise salvation but offer no quarter: “THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN’T DO” rides a off-kilter progression into the ground as an electrifying paranoia takes hold; “GIVE UP YOUR LIFE” is relatedly ominous but more unctuous, its wondrously sludgy chords diving in pitch like an Alex G vinyl warped in heat; “RAPID AND COMPLETE RECOVERY” is nauseous rehab at the kind of spa you’d find on vaporwave cover art.

Rest assured, ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH is still a beautiful record, and its beauty might actually be enhanced by the ugliness of the surrounding context. Its middle section in particular represents the peak of the high, especially in “THE SERVER IS IMMERSED’s” Beatleseque melodiousness and the initial kaleidoscopic swing of “IT MIGHT TAKE SOME TIME.” And yet each of those tracks find their way into their respective nightmare-scapes, the former growing scales of rot and the latter morphing into a chaotic Panda Bear pastiche falling apart in the absence of instant gratification. Similarly to the fractured environment on Zack Schwartz’s first record for his side project draag me, there aren’t really complete songs here: just myriad pupates disintegrating into clusters of dopamine vacuums.

The climax comes near the end, in the six-minute “I SUCK THE DEVIL’S COCK,” which flips from manic euphoria to sickening dysphoria in turns. It’s about as close to a Rosetta Stone as we get, as the narrative shifts from an acid-addled retail worker to a junkie in a bitter haze to a withdrawal and back again. The scope is narrow, but its ambitious structure hits a weighty point: the traps its characters find themselves in are part and parcel to the American experimental endgame, where one short-lived pleasure replaces another in increasingly rapid frequencies. The things we consume – drugs, orgasms, images on screens, – are slowly becoming our reasons to exist, without an end in sight. Entertainment, then death.

Recommended for bathing in eyes.