Sunday. Depending on your Saturday, either a day for blasting away the cobwebs, or, easing yourself into the day gently and without undue trauma.
I’m off the booze (medical reasons, don’t ask) and thus, don’t have a need for gentle half-awake sounds to round off what remains of the weekend.
Unfortunately, in a sense, Burning Bees – a Scottish born, Oxford/France-based duo – are the ideal soundtrack to that hangover that many of us will have experienced this Sabbath.
I’d hesitate to call anything on Good Seed “easy listening”, but the listening is never a chore. ‘Hello Mama’ sets the scene, a laid-back meander through a tune that calls to mind Universal-era Blur, while ‘Questions and Answers’,perhaps the top track on the album, has more than a hint of Chemikal Underground fave slackers the Radar Bros about it. ‘Eat the Crash’ with its lazy sax has an obvious lineage with Black (the ‘Wonderful Life’ guys, naturally), and ‘Nature Boy’ is perhaps the most poppy tune on this album, which could easily grace Radio 2 (that is no insult given that nowadays the station is as much about Maconie as Wogan; I’ll leave you to decide which DJ would be most happy to play the tune).
In all, the album is something of a masterclass of songwriting and arrangements, as well as influences that could form a grab-bag of “how to have a hit record” should the KLF ever decide to dispense with the beats and go for something a little more chilled.
Oddly enough, BurningBees – Neil Grant and Stuart Hobbs once played with Brendan O’Hare in noise rockers Liminal, but if this band’s debut was played at the same time as ‘AA’, it could be that the result would be akin to the meeting of matter and anti-matter. As stated before, my only complaint is that Good Seed Bad Sol is all pretty slowly-paced, but maybe that’s just me, and once I’m back on the booze I could be very grateful for this some future weekend.
