Listen to “There’s Nothing You Can’t Do” by Spirit of the Beehive
Having infinite possibilities would be thrilling, but it would also probably make you wanna puke. “There’s Nothing You Can’t Do,” the new single from Spirit of the Beehive, captures the euphoria and the stomach churn of its title in a wonderfully anarchic rush. The Philadelphia band’s breakout album, 2018’s Hypnic Jerks, showed they could drift between post-punk, ’60s psych, and ’90s shoegaze with the facility of early Deerhunter, weaving in samples of old family recordings for extra eeriness. Follow-up Entertainment, Death, due out April 9, will be Spirit of the Beehive’s first album as a newly stripped-down trio, as well as their first for the respected indie label Saddle Creek, and this first taste from the record explodes and refines the group’s previous sound.
The obvious change is a fresh yen for icy electronic beats, but the band’s knack for juxtaposing noise-rock squalls with lullaby serenity seems to have only strengthened. Aside from the spoken-word title phrase, which floats over opening and closing washes of humming ambience like another dusty field recording, the most discernible lyrics are guitarist and frontman Zack Schwartz’s frenzied howls of “I’ll be your friend.” They can be heard amid a noise-rock freakout (in a section two-thirds of the way through) where limitless potential meets weirdo catharsis. But bassist/vocalist Rivka Ravede’s sing-song stream of consciousness offers an unsettling, hypnotic counterpoint, faintly reminiscent of late-’00s Philly dream-poppers A Sunny Day in Glasgow. Meanwhile, an equally enigmatic music video follows a virtual-reality explorer and her pill-popping doppelgänger. Are they your friends? Ahead of Entertainment, Death, it feels as if there’s nothing Spirit of the Beehive can’t do.