Customer Reviews

Honey Lingers

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While their debut LET IT BEE was an auspicious pop intro peppered with a little power punk, HONEY LINGER chooses to focus on the "pop" more than the "punk", and in the process the sisters Belland produce a sophomore effort that artistically supercedes its' predecessor. Comparisons the girls garnered to the B-52s on the first album continue here, though as one reviewer said it would be doing the sisters a disservice to compare them to anyone--they definately march to the beat of their own drum. Would-be pop classics abound here, from the opening 'Monsters and Angels' to the closing 'A Perfect Place', with nary a misstep. In between, the sardonic wit exibited in their previous work is front and center, especially on charmingly goofy tracks like 'Adonis Blue' and 'Look At Me'. The failure by many to categorize their music ultimately hurt them, I think, which is a shame because this was one of the best pop albums to come out of the early nineties. If you want further proof, just go to track three--who else could cover David Cassidy's bubblegum anthem 'I Think I Love You' and actually make it sound like a great song?

I actually discovered this VOTB recording before Let It Bee, but I love them both! Just as cynical, just as catchy, 'Honey' offers more spicy than sweet, but that's what the group is good at! I must disagree with the reviewer who doesn't like "Shooting Cupid" and "Say It" - those are two of my favorite tracks! I remember thinking "Cupid" would have made a great un-Valentine music video from the group! Maybe I'm as cynical as the girls are on this, but I think they're right on target with that track! The songs go up and down from start to finish - fast and slow, ballads to pop, but always listenable and always with something to say. Even David Cassidy's "I Think I Love You" gets new life the way they belt it out! Always a pleasant diversion - very underrated!

Voice of the beehive are all that fluff and the magical things (that artists like tori amos turn dark) that make being alive feel great. sugary lyrics and great harmonies esp. on monsters and angels and just like you. my favorite is perfect place...a beautiful song about changing the world for the better...this album will have you walking in the clouds...i also recommend the other two..let it bee and sex and misery which has the infectious scary kisses song....

To know this band is to love them. The songs are intelligent and thought provoking, yet sound sweet and poppy. On Honey Lingers they blend songs to save the world (for example, "Perfect Place") with songs of love ("Adonis Blue" and the old David Cassidy song, "I think I Love You"). An album not to be taken too seriously nor too lightly, but listened to often.

Noone makes you feel good like Voice of The Beehive. I love to listen to this album when I am down and up...it is just all around fun. I'm Shooting Cupid, and the pun-filled Just Like You are true classics...what more can be said than fun, and wonderfully fabulous

Okay, first things first. The reviewer who called "I Think I Love You" an Osmonds tune obviously never watched "The Partridge Family". :-) Now that we've got that out of the way... I *adore* VOTB's version of that song - it rocks! I bought this album on tape soon after it came out, and recently I rediscovered it in my collection. I popped it in the tape deck of my car...and didn't take it out for a couple of weeks. I listened to it on the way to and from work every day and didn't get sick of it. "Monsters and Angels" is still a fantastic, fun song all these years later. I'd say besides that and "I Think I Love You," probably my favorite is "Just Like You" - because it's fast and thumpy and especially for the wonderfully clever lyric "It's just like you to leave me shakin in my go-go boots." That just sums up the FUN these girls provide.

The second album of the Voice of the Beehive, and probably their best. "Honey Lingers" is an exercise in pure, perfect guitar pop, ripe with heavenly harmonies, flawless instrumentation and gorgeous two-part vocals by the Belland sisters. On top of that comes some clever songwriting, with a certain knack for irony as well as for lush melodies.

It starts off promisingly with the slow-rolling chorus-heavy beauty of "Monsters and Angels" and ends up with the somewhat wistful "Perfect Place" (complete with allusions to their best-known song "I walk the earth" from 1987). In between pure pop gems are to be found with fundamentally no disappointment. (Well, the Osmonds ditty "I think I love you" can be a nuisance sometimes because of the annoyingly catchy hookline.) My favourite tracks are "I'm shooting Cupid" (perfect marriage of guitar pop and sardonic lyrics), "Little gods" (soaring harmonies and all that - the kind of song usually referred to as "summer hit") and the aforementioned "Monsters and Angels".

There is also the rather cocky "Look at me" with its digs at modern self-centredness and the airy groove of "Beauty to my eyes". In fact, there is only one thing that prevents me from giving the full 5-star rating, namely the fact that "Honey Lingers" (note the pun?) runs only for about half an hour.

My first experience with these 2 fabulous women and their band dates back in the early 90's. I heard the 'hit?' Monsters and Angles on a 80's flash back type radio show and I was hooked. I ran out and bought the CD and pretty much like every song on it. When the girls harmonize they sound smooth as honey. I happen to like bubble gum type music and theirs is as sugary sweet as it gets. Some might say it has a raunchy flavor, but I find it rather provocative, if not totally true! My personal favorite besides 'Monsters and Angles' is 'Say It'. I am a hopeless romantic as well so this song is very fitting... ahh now if I could just find the woman in that song...

The first album was a fresh burst grinding guitar and power pop, and the loopy and colourful cover led people to believe that they were mindless pop. Wrongo! Ditto for Honey Lingers, where Tracy Bryn and Melissa Brooke Belland are decked out in pink dresses resembling that worn by La Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
The same grinding guitars, drums, and power pop sound from Let It Bee are here, but the cynicism and stings have sharpened considerably in the areas of romance, and any idealist will die of acute poisoning upon hearing certain songs...

...such as "Monsters And Angels", where the protagonist is proud to be nobody's anything, be it "nobody's wife", "nobody's baby", "nobody's valentine", "nobody's pearl", and "nobody's mother." but there is a kind of escape clause from that affirmation when she says "then again maybe" This divided state of mind is elaborated thusly: "There's a peacefulness and a rage inside us all" and "there is ice and fire in every single heart." So this balanced neutrality is an answer? Interesting.

Sharp riffs punctuate "Adonis Blue", with its ringing hard guitar. Definitely a girly song, but this song about one's ideal opposite whose mold they broke after his birth, someone "who's just as sad as me, but always smiling" is catchy enough.

They do a decent cover of the Partridge Family's "I Think I Love You", and love that fuzzy guitar and bass.

However, the keyboards and hard guitar hooks in "Look At Me" is a scathing look at the Donahue/Oprah mentality of people trying to get attention, thinking they got problems, drama, stories no else has, and trying to outcompete others. "I really have a lot of pain to express" The songs wryly ends "The earth is drying. Planets are dying. Everybody is saying, "Yea, I know but look at me!" Why are people so parochial?

"Beauty To My Eyes" is a mid-paced acoustic ballad spiced with some string synths in the chorus.

With the cacophony of drums, guitars, and synths, "It's Just Like You" outdoes the rocking party of the B-52's "Love Shack." Silly but catchy rhymes and similes and opposite dynamics. "You're the plug and I'm the socket/I;m the moon and you're the rocket/you can sing it, you can talk it/you're the change in my back pocket" made me roll my eyes and shake my head in amusement. And what's with "I'll be your braille if you'll read me everynight"? Clever or silly?

OK, I understand grown women being cynical about love but programming them when they're young tots? "Little Gods" has a Bangles-like melody and the title is what little girls should not treat little boys like because they don't keep promises. Nice song and melody though.

"I'm Shooting Cupid" is my favourite song here and further proof that Bryn and Belland have had one too many disappointing love experiences. The girls declare war thus: "Cupid you've got yourself a brand new enemy/it's time to get cruel/i'm calling a duel" Why? Because "You made me a loveless girl" they sing in the refrain. "To keep humans kind, I'm getting you from behind." Given their take that famous couples like Antony and Cleopatra and Adam and Eve should've been left alone, I wonder if they'll use a bazooka on Cupid. Yup! KABAM, there he goes in a shower of feathers!

"Say It" describes that one needn't say one's feelings because "sometimes when you talk too much, the words get old and dusty" so there are other ways other than saying it. "I know something else we can do" she sings. Do I detect a knowing seductive wink in that line?

This could be a "Perfect Place" if people who keep saying "I will change tomorrow" actually follow up on that, hence their borrowing a snatch of lyric from a song on Let It Bee: "I walk the earth my darling but I never feel at home."

This must've had some kind of impact, as they came up with a third album, but the songwriting team of the girls and guitarist Mike Jones is a real asset here. The recurring anti-romance theme adds to the successfully power-pop formula. Another winner from the Beehive girls.

This album is fun and more polished than Let It Bee. However, it loses the edge with which Let It Bee stung me. Yes, Tracey and Melissa still deliver their sassy, sarcastic lyrics, and I would say that the lyrics, while not sophisticated by any stretch of the imagination, improve stylistically from Let It Bee. But this album does not fulfill the promise VOTB exhibited in their debut. Some songs on this album are, however, jewels... including "Look At Me", "Say It" and "Just Like You."

Not a bad album at all, but it was a bit disappointing after the wham-bam effect of the first album. You will have fun, though.