ALBUM REVIEW: NATIONAL BEEKEEPERS SOCIETY – PAWN SHOP ETIQUETTE

ALBUM REVIEW: National Beekeepers Society – Pawn Shop Etiquette
words: Gareth O’Malley

Pawn Shop Etiquette cover

So how about that album cover, then? The tracklisting is mainly on the back cover, with the song names on stickers. It crosses over to the front cover, with the album’s final, title, track in the bottom-left corner. I’m not really a fan of the artwork, if I’m honest, but I feel it adds something to the album.

National Beekeepers Society hail from Wisconsin in the U.S., yet the album opener, ‘Look At Me’, sounds remarkably like Wolf Parade, a Canadian band, and there are hints of other Canadian bands throughout the record – Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire (strangely enough) spring to mind at times.

There are quite a few brilliant lyrics here too. The aforementioned ‘Look At Me’ rails against celebrity culture – “I wanna perfect life made for perfect people!”, howls the lead singer, after giving us his best Spencer Krug impression in the verses, over a sideways time signature and pounding drums. ‘Lazy’ boasts the best line on the album, “Let’s place a minimum bet on who gets offended”.
‘Given In’ sounds quite like Spoon, another band these guys have been compared to, and it’s a cracking song, with more lyrics that stick in your head – “I can hate myself, but that don’t make it right”, for instance.

National Beekeepers Society

Those three tracks were on the sampler I heard last week, and I was expecting the rest of the album to maintain the high standards that had been set by its first three tracks. It does, for the most part. ‘Upon the Hills of Georgia’ (most of this song is in 5/4 – I quite like unusual time signatures, so I loved this track) sounds remarkably like The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘Take Five’, oddly enough. It is also the shortest song on the album, coming in at little over a minute. ‘Suburbanite’ also deserves a mention for its lyrics: “Sometimes I stare at the walls of my apartment / Waiting for a call from someone important… Life is hard for a suburbanite”.
It’s pretty much all good so far, but the next few tracks aren’t all that remarkable or memorable, with ‘Orange Is For Apathy’ occupying space on the tracklisting, and little else, contributing nothing to the album and coming across as little more than filler.

This is followed by the best song on the album, ‘Fall of Rome’. Acoustic guitars take centre stage, and the song’s melody is the most memorable on offer here. It is at this point that the album enjoys a resurgence. ‘Confidence’ takes an unexpected detour near the end of the song, and we find NBS in a rockier mode than usual.
Things are brought to a close with ‘Pawn Shop Etiquette’, which starts off quite quietly before building to a stunning climax.

This is by no means an immediate album, and most of the songs don’t outstay their welcome. ‘Pawn Shop Etiquette’ clocks in at just over 34 minutes. It is a disjointed and chaotic record, and there are flashes of pure brilliance here and there. The tracklisting, however, lets it down slightly, and by the end of the album, you’re left thinking, as I was, “Good job NBS. Two words though: Quality. Control.”