The second of Derby-based label Reveal Records’ tasty 7” singles for July brings us a quality double-header from Norwegian indie/ power popsters BEEZEWAX.
Indeed, if you thought Norway was purely home to ludicrous death metallers and chill-out meisters like Royksopp, then this is one in the eye in a big way, as Beezewax – Kenneth Ishak (vocals, guitar, piano, songs), Stian Olsen (drums), Marcus Holm (guitar/ keyboards) and bassist Kalua Kim Wiesloeff – know the cut of an elegant three-minute pop song with all the requisite West Coast harmonies in the right place and that crucial undertow of melancholy. Not for nothing, it seems, do these chaps know Ken Stringfellow (yes, as in Posies and REM) who has apparently added vocals to the band’s forthcoming album.
So it’s no great surprise that the buttons “When You Stood Up” pushes are marked Teenage Fanclub, Big Star etc. Importantly, though, Beezewax are no mere carbon copy and “When You Stood Up” does that lingering melancholic/euphoric pop thing with real aplomb, lashings of windswept piano and Kenneth swooning through great, last-gasp lyrics like “they all want to see us crash/lose our love in the blast” as he fights the dying of the light. Magnificent. ‘Twould sound great on radio, an’ all.
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B-side “Take Any Life” initially throws a curve with a resolutely lo-fi opening 45 seconds which sound like they might be better housed on early albums by Guided By Voices or Sebadoh, but thereafter a better roduction pokes through the skein and the band seep dreamily through the cracks. It’s not quite up there with its’ illustrious flip, but not without an inherent charm of its’ own either and continues to bode well for that second album.
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