After a three-year wait, the Dutch duo
Beequeen return as a trio; on
Port Out Starboard Home, Olga Wallis (a guest vocalist on 2008's Sandancing) is now a permanent member of the band. This new arrangement turns out to be something of a mixed blessing. Wallis' voice is tremulously pretty, the melodies are generally pretty good, and her vocals add nicely to the abstract soundscapes that are produced by
Frans de Waard and Freek Kinkelaar. Unfortunately, the lyrics given her by Kinkelaar to sing are almost uniformly awful and suggest that Kinkelaar isn't actually a fluent speaker of English (sample couplet: "When all is said and done, it's time to take my bath/The sun has gone, curtains closed, shampoo dosed"). There's nothing wrong with not speaking English fluently, of course, unless you feel that you must write songs in English; most of the songs on this album would have been much more listenable if they'd been written in some other language, preferably one that no one understands. That said, there are also moments of great and unsettling beauty here: "A Snared Dwarf" is built from a formless blend of musical pitches (perhaps made by a guitar) and layers of noise in shades of gray and white, and ends up being both relaxing and eerie; "Howard Is Not at Home" is also quite abstract, but this time the noises suggest wind, creaking masts, and digitally generated seabirds. The title track is wonderful: simple but not dumb, beautiful but not poppy. The final track, ironically titled "The Lord Is My Shepherd," is also excellent, and features baahing sheep, white noise, pinging submarine sonar, glitchy crickets, and subliminal rumblings. And, gratefully, almost no lyrics. ~ Rick Anderson