The Fat Angel Sings

We last heard from She Keeps Bees, the duo of Jessica Larrabee and Andy LaPlant, back in 2014, when they shared the critically acclaimed record, Eight Houses. The subsequent five years have been something of a personal journey, Jessica losing her father, before the pair moved to upstate New York and began a family of their own. The result of all that change is their new record, “Kinship”; a record full of death, birth and the endless cycles of nature as we know it.

This week the band have shared the latest offering from Kinship, in the shape of the striking title track. Built around a primal, pounding drum beat and Jessica’s prominent vocal, it’s only on repeat listens that all of the intricate musical details reveal themselves, whether that’s the twitching keys or the subtle percussive flourishes that counter the main driving beat. Lyrically, as you’d perhaps expect it’s a song of togetherness and connectivity, in particular it focuses on the idea of water as the binding force of all nature, the one constant that links us to all life and the planet around us, “living water mother of all, visible manifestation of chaos”. Hypnotic and never hopeless, Kinship seems to be a record that sits on the cusp of an environmental, and very human, crisis, yet it refuses to go meekly, it is a record ready to fight for a better future, for ourselves, our children and our planet as we know it.

Kinship is out May 10th via Ba Da Bing Records. 

Ba Da Bing Records are about to release She Keeps Bees new album. Singer/guitarist Jessica Larrabee sang on Roy Montgomery’s last album. And she also sang on the Sharon Van Etten record (wonder what ever happened to her?) But, in essence, we haven’t really have heard them before this their next record, Kinship. The album is coming out on Ba Da Bing in North America. Currently living in upstate NY, Jessica and Andy LaPlant have made the most stunning record of their covetous career. Kinship hides its intensity through a wall of skill, songs conveying minimal drama that bubbles just under the surface with resonant power. Larrabee’s voice absorbs the perspective of Mother Nature, singing about climate fears and earth’s future with a deep omniscience. Here’s an album that can only be made by a masterly group who can work together so intuitively that the songs emanate their effects, with a delicate approach to dynamism.

You can hear it on “Coyote” which is the first single off the record. It’s a song about Katie Lee, a musician/activist who recorded for Smithsonian Folkways and led a protest against building a dam in Arizona’s Glen Canyon.  The video for “Coyote” displays home films from Lee’s estate which show her love for the Colorado River.