Thao with the Get Down Stay Down's Know Better Learn Faster

Track List:

1. "The Clap" - 0:33 (Oh, why couldn't you have been a real song??)
2. "Cool Yourself" - 2:34
3. "When We Swam" - 2:58
4. "Know Better Learn Faster" - 3:49
5. "Body" - 3:12
6. "The Give" - 3:44
7. "Goodbye Good Luck" - 2:22
8. "Trouble Was For" - 2:47
9. "Oh. No." - 2:46
10. "Fixed It!" - 2:57
11. "Burn You Up" - 2:28
12. "But What of Strangers" - 3:37
13. "Easy" - 3:37

My initial reaction to any band I like releasing an album only a year after their prior is apprehension. Obviously, I’m excited at the prospect of more Thao tunes, but not if they’re rushed. I would much rather wait two years and fall in love all over again than be disappointed. Some bands, like Of Montreal or Nick Thorburn and his various bands, feel the need to reinvent themselves between each album, and sometimes it really pays off. But other times you get Skeletal Lamping or Arm’s Way fiascos. It’s a risk. As the title of Thao’s newest might imply, they realize that sometimes all you really need to do is build on what you have.

The best part of We Brave Bee Stings and All is the variety of instrumentation. Despite the fact that each track seems to offer something completely unique in and of itself, the band manages to create a very defining sound. It would require specific annotation of each track to fully appreciate the vast arsenal used in accomplishing their sound. On the other hand, the mature delivery of youthful wonderment can be seen without this sort of detail. It can be accurately summarized by lines like “we brave bee stings and all, we don’t dive we cannonball,” hence the title. It’s simple, it’s charming, and it’s exemplary of the genius of Thao. Like the Linen, the official debut relied heavily on the genius of Thao, but with the help of Tucker Martine’s experience producing Sufjan and The Decemberists, Bee Stings brought the whole band into the limelight. The songs, their execution and their production were all damn near pop perfection. So the question is, how can they possibly improve? Bring on the apprehension.

We start with the freewheeling “Cool Yourself” defined by the wailing guitar, the jaunty keyboard riffs and the incredibly welcome addition of the baritone sax. The track is very in the moment as if in denial of what is to come later in the album, though there are signs of preconception intimated by the musical breaks and lines like “I will love you like this now, you can recognize it later.” The title track starts steering the album towards heartbreak with the fervent strings (another welcome addition, probably thanks to the Portland Cello Project) underscoring the track’s thesis, “I need you to be better than me.” And just as the strings fade out, the line transforms to the slightly more hostile “You need me to do better than you.” Thao has a way of cutting right to the heart of the matter, either subtly as on this track, or the much more belligerent “Body.” “What am I just a body in your bed? Won’t you reach for the body in your bed” turns the hostility into outright anger. The next four tracks slow the pace of the album, taking time to reflect on relationships considering how the relationship arose, how it fell apart, why it was worth it in the first place, and what happens next, respectively. After that we’ve arrived at “Fixed It!” the bargaining track that has Thao announcing “I’ve fixed it, what you hated. I’ll keep it to myself if I can’t sell you some.” Finally comes acceptance in the snappy organ laden “Burn You Up” and “Easy” carried along, easily as you might guess, by drum machine.

Bee Stings plays like a collaboration of supremely talented musicians with a whole lot of good ideas. It sort of serves as a “Best of Childhood” mix, so when you really think about it, it absolutely should be as impetuous as it is, jumping from one idea to the next. The songwriting, lyrically, left little room for improvement after Bee Stings, but the facilitation of the music surrounding the lyrics has improved dramatically. You can really feel the construction of each track, and in every case the music serves to strengthen the story. Thao sticks to her exploration of human interaction, but hones the perspective more towards romantic relationships utilizing the five stages of grief (gold star if you picked up on that). The strength of this album is in the storytelling.