The Whole Bee Hive

Jukes “I Wasn’t Even Looking” – This song, which sounds like a cross between a solemn Ennio Morricone score and Broadcast at their most portentous, feels like an ideal soundtrack today, as New York enters day two of an incredibly dreary rainathon. It’s not exactly shocking to me that this artist is from Bristol – sometimes it seems as though everything which comes from there sounds as bleak and resigned as this. (Click here to buy it from Twisted Nerve.)

String Quartet Tribute To Beyonce “Work It Out” – For the past two years, I have been collecting string quartet tribute records, mainly those released by Vitamin Records. Since Vitamin tends to focus on current hitmakers and the giants of 80s/90s alt-rock, I assume that their target market must be young fans with a compulsion for completism and a taste for novelty. On one hand, these albums are amazingly inessential and inherantly ridiculous – what exactly is the point of making Marilyn Manson’s music sound ‘classy’? Nevertheless, the recordings can be surprisingly good and suggest an unexpected continuity between modern pop and actual classical music.

In some cases, the character of a song can change rather dramatically with the new arrangement. Nearly all of the songs on last year’s String Quartet Tribute To Beyonce reveal a regal, martial bombast to Beyonce’s music which is mostly obscured by the abundance of soul and funk on the original recordings. In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense – the urgency of “Crazy In Love” is rather like a battle march in its way; the romantic yearning of “Baby Boy” does take on the heightened drama of a grand opera; and “Work It Out” certainly commands attention and respect as though the singer were entitled royalty. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)