New Band: She Keeps Bees

Brooklyn boy/girl band show the guitar/drums combo is not dead

by Russ CoffeySunday, 27 February 2011

She Keeps Bees: Like PJ Harvey in Tennessee during a full moon

The White Stripes may have just announced their retirement but theartsdesk can report that the boy/girl two piece is still alive and well in the form of She Keeps Bees, a Brooklyn-based band currently on a mini-tour around Britain and Europe. Here it’s the girl, Jess Larrabee on guitar, and boy, Andy LaPlant on drums. The sound is superficially similar to The White Stripes with Larrabee delivering gutsy blues rock guitar, but vocally she sounds more like PJ Harvey stranded in Tennessee during a full moon. The soon-to-be-released sophomore album, Dig On, was self-recorded in a log cabin in upstate New York, and during a sound check for their warm-up gig at The Windmill, Brixton, the pair told theartsdesk how they came to record it.

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Permalink Submitted by @absurdabsurd (not verified) on Tue, 01/03/2011 - 08:56

I always feel like I must have gotten lazy when the first review I read of a band makes the exact same comparisons I've made. Not sure where I stand on the "animal" - a return to a primeval sitting-around-the-campfire call for rhythm, perhaps, but nothing on the level of something evoked by say Austin Lucas at the Windmill last year. But then British crowds are difficult to drag into that sort of thing; they prefer being performed AT rather than taking part except in rare cases. But, thanks for sharing the piece (it's in no way terrible).

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