15 August 2012

Bee Eyes - honeymoon ep (2012)


Bee Eyes is a polymorphous indie band from the Philippines and more precisely from Metro Manila. A four people band with the usual setup of two guitars, vocals, drums and bass. They play indie lo-fi songs which could have been recorded during de early nineties, somewhere between USA and UK. 


If there was a tag record K Records, a recording date of  1993, I would have been totally mystified and would have said to myself: another unknown band of musicians who felt under the radar mixing their indie roots with a love for England's indie guitar (twee) pop.

Bee Eyes is a modern band, who started as a projects of friends in 2006 and stayed active until now. They have a couple of releases and I feel in love with their most recent single. Idris Vicuna, from previously lauded here Eyedress, is playing the lead guitar and apparently contributes to second vocals but mostly Bee Eyes seems to be the personal expression of Julius Valledor (vocals/rhythm guitar).

I'll be a little more picky about this release. There are six songs and five of them are tagged as demos. The one which is not a demo, "Playboiii" is strangely my less favorite one.

I prefer when Julius sings with fervor with a quite twee attitude. Then they start collect tiny sweet shoegaze pop miracles, like "She dreams in color", which sounds almost like a bright forgotten Boo Radleys early demo. 

They embrace a darker line on "Half Cartoon" proving the multiplicity of their ambiances, explore some crooner chillwave pop on "Sunday Slowdown". "Beekeeper" has got this kind of slow relaxed warmth I enjoy on certain Sea & Cake records. "Dasma Girl" explores the reverb bedroom pop direction. 

I think now they need to apply to each of these demo's the production and refinement process which makes their single "Double Sunrise" so wonderful. 

"Honeymoon ep" is a work in progress, there is a potential, the songs are there, they just need to be slightly more appealing than now, but well that's why they present this release as a collection of demo's.

I'm confident. 

http://beeeyes.blogspot.be/
http://www.mediafire.com/?v0i2et8o6802u83

Dasma Girl from Idris Vicuña on Vimeo.

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