Swarme of Beese first album "Backwoods of my Mind" was released in 2022. Their second album "Fruits of the Golden Land" was released in 2023. Their third album "Waiting for a Sign" was released in December 2024. You might get the impression that Swarme of Beese is stuck under a bad contract and forced to release an album a year due to a tiny, fine printed clause. Artists and bands doesn't seem to respond well when others try to limit their artistic freedom. No comparison intended, but Neil Young was charged by his label Geffen that he was violating his contract by recording "unrepresentative" albums. Backwood Modern Recordings isn't Geffen and besides Swarme of Beese make "representative" albums. The high production rate must be sought elsewhere. Swarme of Beese was orinally formed as The Victor Mourning in Austin, TX in 2008. They released their one and only album "A Handful of Locusts" in 2010. Between 2010–2017 the band members were divided between Texas and Tennessee, and relocated back to Austin in 2018. They decided to change their band name to reflect their new musical direction. Seems like that they now are making up for lost time. Swarme of Beese make timeless music for adults. From the product declaration of the new album: "Beginning with a meditation on bird migration that may be interpreted as a metaphor for the cycle of life, the album’s nine evocative songs travel through time, visiting places that include a WWI battlefield on Christmas Eve, and the cemetery of an abandoned 19th-century lunatic asylum. Whether imagining a young man’s daydreams in the depths of a Minnesota winter, or recalling a romantic awakening on a sultry Texas evening — and finally culminating in an urgent, apocalyptic lament on the climate/environmental crisis, the poetic songwriting is always imbued with a strong spirit of place and an American gothic undercurrent."
The third album from the Austin trio is a bit more folksy than gothic. I don't mind as long it's roots music with quality. A lot of thought and work has been put into the production of this album. The song themes are varied, to say the least. For example, the song "Christmas Truce". It refers to when British, Belgian and French soldiers put down their rifles, stepped out of their trenches and spent Christmas mingling with their German enemies along the Western front in 1914. The military command didn't like it. Human actions like this could undermine morale. It happened anyway. Antother song is "Kill a Spider", which was recorded and released digitally by The Victor Mourning already in 2013. The song is inspired by the story of Frankie Silver who allegedly killed her husband with an axe in 1831. Frankie was charged with the crime, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Despite strong public support for clemency, Frankie was hanged, and her body was buried in an unmarked grave. This later version is different from the 2013 version. However, I like both versions. Despite the varied themes, it's a focused and coherent album.
The best songs are "Gone on the Wing", "Red House", "Burn that Bridge Down", "Kill a Spider", "10 000 Frozen Lakes" and, last but not least, "Spaces in Between". Executive summary: another solid album from Swarme of Beese. You can listen to "Waiting for Sign" and buy it in the format of your choice at Bandcamp, just click here (opens in a new window).