Love Wakes Up – Solitary Bee (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Whilst using one band to channel your every creative urge and idea through like an all-encompassing conduit between you and every potential listener is all very well and good, but sometimes it can get a bit confusing for the audience, especially if those urges and ideas cover a wide and eclectic range. In such cases, it is often a good idea to compartmentalise your music using one or more additional outlets or, in musical terms, side projects. And that is precisely what those awfully nice chaps at It’s Karma It’s Cool have done with the launch of Solitary Bee.

It’s a project driven by the idea that such a new sonic delivery system could cater to their more left-field indulgences, allowing the musical mothership to concentrate on what it does best, blurring the lines between infectious pop and deftly wrought rock.

And Love Wakes Up is the first of their Anthophilic antics*. If it reminds us of It’s Karma It’s Cool, it is mainly in the similar musical modus operani. By this, I mean that It’s Karma It’s Cool seems to have a slick way of doing things and a close eye for musical detail that results in lush, warm and easily accessible sonics, and the same is true of Solitary Bee.

As opening musical statements go, it’s a corker. It’s still a pop song in the broader sense, but pop that leans into a slightly 60’s pastoral sound, which plays with folkier feelings and bucolic beauty, chiming, and indeed charming picked guitars and that gorgeous voice of Jim’s dancing deftly over the top of it all. It feels almost lullaby-ish but with just enough rock guitar riffs and buoyant beats to tether the whole thing to the real world.

The sentiment is fantastic. On the surface, it is a celebration of spring, the coming alive of the world after a difficult winter, something that we can all relate to. Give it another spin, and you realise that it could also be an analogy of a relationship, one getting to lay past problems to rest and finally being able to bask in the sun.

Intelligent yet accessible, poised and purposeful pop. Now that’s one helluva calling card for a new band.

*Finally, my childhood fascination with insects pays off.