SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING (2024) [Hi-Res]

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. 2018’s Hypnic Jerks was a study in noise punk sampledelia. It was a breakthrough for the band. Frank Ocean became a fan, spinning “fell asleep with a vision,” on Blonded Radio. 2021’s Entertainment Death, was nasty dream pop by way of K-Mart realism and hitting the channel search setting on an old TV set.

Their last release, 2023’s I’m so Kucky, 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.

The goal in making You'll have to Lose Something was to soften out some of the edges. “Less hard left turns,” says Wichlin. “We wanted to make something intentionally less antagonistic,” he jokes. In practice, this means the record has slightly fewer drastic arrangement changes, and it is more stripped down. Take “I’ve Been Evil,” one of the newest songs on the record, as one such offering. It is straightforward in that its tempo is consistent, in that the song keeps us in the same place. It does not digress. It holds itself steady, with bleary-eyed guitars and hushed vocals. The song is weary, the song is a whisper. The utterance “I’ve been evil,” is like the shrug of a shoulder, a so what, ha ha.