Indie rock has many strains and many flavors, and The Cold Head are adding their own touch to the genre this February with their new single “Spirit of the Beehive.” As its eccentric title would imply, this is hardly an act of conventionality on the part of these independent musicians, but instead quite the daring effort of hook and harmony aimed at winning over some fans overwhelmingly bored with the impotence of modern pop/rock. It’s definitely a melody-first kind of a single, but not one that gets lost in the cosmetic element a lot of other songs do.
The old school structure of the rhythm here is certainly compelling, but it’s not what defines the mood of the music or the lyrics. Truth be told, this is one of the more well-rounded and full-bodied works to come out of the underground on the British side of the Atlantic in the better part of the last six months; there is no real centerpiece largely because everything feels contributive and cultured. It isn’t easy piecing together something as colorful as this without sounding at least a little left-field aesthetically, but I think The Cold Head knew as much coming into this single.
“Spirit of the Beehive” features a rather freewheeling percussive force in the backdrop, but it’s made to increase the vitality of the beat and put a giant exclamation point on everything this singer is conveying at the microphone. There are definitely a lot of working parts to this track, but it doesn’t ever have that stacked progressive feel that a lot of other alternative pop songs tend to. Maybe they’re purists, but at the very least this is a group that likes to preserve the delicate integrities of their music no matter how much time and detail has to go into it.
There isn’t a spot of filler getting us lost in the translation of the narrative here, and I for one think that a lot of pop singer/songwriters could learn something from the efficient shaping of the lyrics in this track. There’s one heck of a big difference between those who cheat the audience with simplistic poeticisms and those who know how to keep the fat trimmed off of a meaty piece of material, and I think that The Cold Head ranks highly in the latter group for certain. This is a song that introduces them marvelously, and without anything to cloud our appreciation for the music.
The Cold Head delivers a universally-appealing work of pop pleasantry in “Spirit of the Beehive” that is definitely worth a little extra attention from the press, and I think it’s very telling of what their skill is when jamming in the studio together. This is a democratic union of players, and while they’re individuals playing in a band together, they still have a collective sound that isn’t just intriguing to the critic in me – it’s stimulating to my ears as a lifelong fan of pop music and a confessed hook aficionado.
Chadwick Easton