The Bees (A Band of Bees) - Sunshine Hit Me (2002)

Sunshine Hit Me is the fearlessly individual debut album by The Bees, two close friends from the isolated community on the Isle of Wight that write and perform their material in a shed, using their own gradually-amassed treasure-trove of home recording equipment. They may not actually listen to The Beta Band, but Paul Butler and Aaron Fletcher have certainly come to the same eccentric conclusions: that basically, in the field of music-making, truly anything goes.

Where the Beta Band are something of a law unto themselves, however, Sunshine Hit Me has some clear reference points. On "No Trophy", the pair have a shot at replicating the thick dub grooves of old-skool reggae, and impressively, get the vintage Jamaican production sound almost spot-on, while "Angryman" finds them cheerfully ape the moog-laden falsetto groove of Funkadelic. Of course, there's a few tunes that simply defy description, laden as the are with the sound of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink being bashed with drumsticks in the background, and throughout, the lyrics sound like nonsense, save for the odd beautifully hippy-dippy couplet--"I want to hold you/ Like the sky holds the sun," they shiver on the album's tearful closer. But unlike many of their tirelessly zany peers, The Bees might be teaching some lessons that will stick.--Louis Pattison