Spirit of the Beehive with Dari Bay and The Infinity Ring

Philadelphia-based psych/punk/alternative trio Spirit of the Beehive returns to SPACE for the first time in a decade.

For the past decade, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE have honed an aesthetic like no other. They’ve chopped up samples, chewed them up, spit them back out again, baby birded it. Across four albums and a smattering of EPs, Zack Schwartz, Corey Wichlin, and Rivka Ravede have fully solidified their stance as some of rock’s weirdest and best deconstructionists. 2018’s Hypnic Jerk was a study in noise punk sampledelia. It was a breakthrough for the band. Frank Ocean became a fan, spinning “fell asleep with a vision,” on Blonded Radio. 2021’s ENTERTAINMENT DEATH, was nasty dream pop by way of K-Mart realism and hitting the channel search setting on an old TV set.

Their last release, 2023’s i’m so lucky, explored the breakup between Schwartz and Ravede, setting the stage and emotional territory for the band’s fifth record, YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING. This latest offering is the most crystallized version of the band’s aesthetic, a continued meditation on the end of relationships and the unsteadiness that follows. It is a meticulous, beautiful, and quietly heartbreaking collection of songs. More often than not, it sounds like listening to a walkman from inside of a hurricane, like the YouTube videos you’d watch in bed for 18 hours straight after you break your wrist from a skateboarding accident.

The goal in making YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING was to soften out some of the edges. “Less hard left turns,” says Wichlin. “We wanted to make something intentionally less antagonistic,” he jokes. In practice, this means the record has slightly fewer drastic arrangement changes, and it is more stripped down. Take “I’VE BEEN EVIL,” one of the newest songs on the record, as one such offering. It is straightforward in that its tempo is consistent, in that the song keeps us in the same place. It does not digress. It holds itself steady, with bleary-eyed guitars and hushed vocals. The song is weary, the song is a whisper. The utterance “I’ve been evil,” is like the shrug of a shoulder, a so what, ha ha.

Less straightforward is the sublime “LET THE VIRGIN DRIVE,” a genuinely frightening pop track that anchors itself on fucked up Japanese City pop samples and a demented news clip of someone screaming. The song was originally written around the time the band was touring ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH, and took a few years to fully flesh itself out. It is like staring into the sun, like waking up in a body bag “It’s about unrequited love and making up a situation or whole life in your head,” says Schwartz of its thematic underpinning, “The other person finally ‘sees you’ and your ‘problems are solved,’ but they aren’t, really.” The song hiccups and warbles — you can hear the tape hiss, the instability, how it kind of feels like the whole song might get sucked into a black hole’s event horizon. “Heaven is a lie/cause you are earthly/and you’re alive,” Schwartz sings at the song’s outset.

YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING is a record of provocations. It wants you to think it is just normal rock ‘n’ roll music. That it is purely pleasure oriented. But beneath these intentions is a collection of songs that are as complex as ever. The Ravede-led “FOUND A BODY,” is a downtempo smoke cloud of variegated synths. “Found a body,” she sings “No one can touch me.” “SUN SWEPT THE EVENING RED,” starts out disconcertingly chipper, before breaking down into an assault of sludged out guitars, auto-tuned vocals, a flurry of strings. Like all Spirit records, It is music made by three distinct voices, written independently and then assembled together. Despite being written all over the globe, with Ravede in Portugal and Schwartz and Wichlin back in Philadelphia, the trio arrived at the same themes: that of the brutality of coming to terms with reality, that of what it means to lie to protect yourself and your heart. Schwartz says he writes songs more less in a stream of consciousness. The band listens to very little outside music when working. The result is a record that very much is its own world. Where chaos is carefully organized, where being able to ever actually chill out is totally illusory, a trick mirror.

Dari Bay has already been many things. Since first launching the band, Zachary James and his friends have used Dari Bay to explore free-for-all experimentation, shape-shifting from project to project before slowly cohering into a vehicle for James’ most direct and personal songwriting. The pivot became clear on 2023’s Longest Day Of The Year, a rangey songwriting exercise that served as Dari Bay’s proper debut. Now, the evolution has blossomed on Surprise Wish, Dari Bay’s sophomore outing and first for Double Double Whammy. Though these nine songs may sound like the work of an assured craftsman, they also emerge from an era of transition, when James puzzled over what he wanted his life to look like, and what Dari Bay would become. 

Growing up in a musical family based in Brattleboro, Vermont, James tried his hand at everything: learning drums as a child, DJ’ing, rap beats, production, elementary school punk rock. “Vermont is small, so it can take time to create a scene with a strong identity,” James recalls. But he eventually became a multi-faceted and in-demand player: providing drums on recordings and tours for old friends Lily Seabird and Greg Freeman, serving as one of the primary songwriters in Robber Robber, joining Unknown Mortal Orchestra as a full-time member, all while steadily concocting Dari Bay’s next chapter. 

Surprise Wish came together slowly over time as James balanced multiple projects while finishing college, but everything about these songs was immediate. Seeking to abandon the genre detours of past Dari Bay releases, James honed in on a scuzzy, visceral rock sound. “I cared less about aesthetics and more about primal feelings,” he explains. For each song, James harnessed moments of sudden, unpredictable inspiration — ideas that struck him then wouldn’t leave him alone. As before, James made much of Surprise Wish alone without real studio time, giving the whole album a raw, homespun quality anchoring lyrics that are intimate yet casual and self-effacing.

The Infinity Ring draws from musicians long active in disparate scenes within the Boston musical underground, incorporating influences that range from metal to crust punk to industrial to electronic scenes. Their music is inspired by the liberty found in acts like Leonard Cohen, This Mortal Coil, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Can, Amon Düül, Faust, Current 93, etc. What began in 2020 as an experimental take on dark folk music with added elements of drone and noise eventually grew to incorporate no wave, post-metal, and black metal, with elements of occult and spiritualism throughout– adhering to none but reminiscent of all.

The band spent most of 2020 and 2021 experimenting in various studios around New England, eventually leading to the collaborative Ohr LP with Jarboe. In early 2022, the band set out to record its debut album, Nemesis & Nativity, at God City Studios in Salem, Massachusetts. Released by Profound Lore in 2023, the record was a revelation throughout the underground, leading to collaborative gigs with Marisa Nadler, appearances at SXSW, Roadburn and Desertfest NYC. 2025 will see the release of ATARAXIA, the first LP in a series of new material due this calendar year.