SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING (CD)

For the past decade, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE have honed an aesthetic like no other. They’ve chopped up samples, chewed them up, spit them back out again, baby birded it. Across four albums and a smattering of EPs, Zack Schwartz, Corey Wichlin, and Rivka Ravede have fully solidified their stance as some of rock’s weirdest and best deconstructionists. Their last release, 2023’s i’m so lucky, explored the breakup between Schwartz and Ravede, setting the stage and emotional territory for the band’s fifth record, YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING. This latest offering is the most crystallized version of the band’s aesthetic, a continued meditation on the end of relationships and the unsteadiness that follows. It is a meticulous, beautiful, and quietly heartbreaking collection of songs. More often than not, it sounds like listening to a walkman from inside of a hurricane, like the YouTube videos you’d watch in bed for 18 hours straight after you break your wrist from a skateboarding accident. YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING is a record of provocations. Despite being written all over the globe, with Ravede in Portugal and Schwartz and Wichlin back in Philadelphia, the trio arrived at the same themes: that of the brutality of coming to terms with reality, that of what it means to lie to protect yourself and your heart. Schwartz says he writes songs more or less in a stream of consciousness. The band listens to very little outside music when working. The result is a record that very much is its own world. Where chaos is carefully organized, where being able to ever actually chill out is totally illusory, a trick mirror.

1. THE DISRUPTION 2. STRANGER ALIVE 3. THE CUT DEPICTS THE CUT 4. LET THE VIRGIN DRIVE 03:24 5. SORRY PORE INJECTOR 6. FOUND A BODY 7. SUN SWEPT THE EVENING RED 8. SOMETHING'S ENDING 01:39 9. I'VE BEEN EVIL 02:34 10. 1/500 11. DUPLICATE SPOTTED 12. EARTH KIT