Saint-Denis

The May Bees

Wampus Multimedia, 2011

http://www.themaybees.com

REVIEW BY: Jason Warburg

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 10/07/2011

“Gregory Orange pays about as much attention to the expectations of the popular music world as a math professor might to an episode of American idol.”

-- from Wampus Multimedia’s one-sheet for The May Bees’ Saint-Denis

Composer-singer-multi-instrumentalist Gregory Orange is the nucleus of The May Bees, whose musical atomic structure on this album includes Patrick Verkamp (bass, keys), and Todd Tobias (bass, drums, percussion, “atmospheres”), and on tour includes Verkamp, drummer Marzj and guitarist Marcus.  Those are the players; the music they make is harder to talk about with the same specificity.  Call it dream-pop with snap and crackle aplenty.

In fact, the only group I can compare The May Bees to with any plausibility is another unjustifiably obscure indie outfit, Transcendence, whose iconoclastic Bowie-Stones-psychedelic-sound-collages album Nothing Is Cohesive once blew my mind halfway to Mars.  The musical antecedents of The May Bees are even harder to point to, though there’s surely a bit of early Bowie in the continental artiness and occasionally glammy guitar lines of songs like “King Or The Enemy,” and perhaps a hint of White Stripes in the thrashy fighting-to-a-draw interplay between drums and guitar on many of these 16 tracks.

But really, what The May Bees sound the most like is visionaries.  In its own way, Saint-Denis—a concept album inspired by Orange’s observations of urban life on the busy Montreal street for which the album is named—is as progressive and expansive as anything Jethro Tull or Genesis ever conceived; it’s just cast in the form of a cycle of mostly three- to four-minute, distinctly otherworldy pop songs.my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250

Even that description feels like a stretch, though.  In truth, Orange uses only the sketchiest outline of pop structure to frame these songs; inside those basic verse-chorus frames he is a fearless, often noisy adventurer, filling out his canvases with soft-loud dynamics, unexpected textures, and thoroughly untamed guitars and drums.  His vocals vary dramatically as well, switching abruptly from the rather keening, Dan Wilson-ish (Semisonic) tones of the plaintive-then-majestic “Chemical And Moisturized” to the grungy, filtered vocal lines of “Valley Of Arts And Science.”

The richest pleasures here can be found in the alien beauty of melody-plus-thrash nuggets like “Decide,” which sounds a bit like both Transcendence and one of Semisonic’s more experimental tunes, and “Soft Paper Plane,” which starts out winsome and weary, and ends up soaring on the strength of a chorus worthy of a Brian Wilson-Jack White co-write.  The fact that it cross-fades into a stormy soundscape that bleeds into a 2:46 sonic collage of street-sounds-plus-repeating-chords (“Rue”) that cuts the album neatly in half… well, let’s just say the math professor was definitely at the lectern for this one, hair wild and a gleam in his eye.

As for said second half, it’s full of aggro dream-thrash (“For Promotional Use”), off-kilter pop (“Played Attraction Played Appeal”), churning, twisted proto-anthems (“Well”), and the odd bit of studio playfulness (all 0:36 of “Serve It With Pickles”).  But don’t lose focus, because lucky number 13 delivers “Maybe Europe,” a three-minute gem whose martial backbeat, expansive chorus and brilliantly unhinged riffs deliver visions of U2 on an acid bender.  The latter impression gets pushed through the panes of a kaleidoscope as the subsequent “Iron Cat” essays what sounds like a bad trip set to loud guitar—wisely held to a less-is-more 1:40.  The album finishes out strongly with the soft open and big instrumental climax of “The Settlers” and the rather somber and stately closer “Saint-Denis.”

Albums are born for many different reasons.  Sometimes the objective is as simple as creating a forward career path for the players and composers.  There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but for those who are genuinely driven to create, there is something thrilling about hearing an artist cast fashion to the winds and deliver the vision that is in their heart and mind without compromise.  I can’t say this album is going to be a regular for me.  There are no sing-along choruses or riffs that stick in your head for days.  What there is, is purity of intent, the abstract beauty inherent in translating a unique artist’s vision into a work that fascinates and challenges.

Rating: B+

User Rating: Not Yet Rated


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© 2011 Jason Warburg and The Daily Vault. All rights reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of Wampus Multimedia, and is used for informational purposes only.