Official Website | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Beekeeper Spaceman – Beekeeper Spaceman
Like its sprawling hometown of Dallas, Texas, cinematic indie rock band Beekeeper Spaceman’s self-titled debut album evokes a never-ending collision between bucolic bygones and the urban present.
Born out of an online multimedia project called Fire Bones, the duo—primary songwriter/ singer/guitarist Greg Brownderville and producer/multi-instrumentalist Spencer Kenney—have shared bills with artists like Erykah Badu, Leon Bridges, Shakey Graves and Black Pumas, and have been lauded in both local music outlets (Dallas Observer, Central Track) and national literary publications (Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Virginia Quarterly Review, LITHUB). Brownderville is editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Southwest Review and author of three books of poetry, while Kenney fronts a solo electro-pop project under his own name and is involved with a variety of acts on the Dallas-based Dolfin Records label.
To fully appreciate Beekeeper Spaceman and its music, it’s helpful to understand Fire Bones, a self-described “go-show”—released in 2021 and optimized for mobile devices—that uses poetry, video, podcasts and visual art to tell an epic story about a fictional town in the Arkansas Delta. The band’s name is taken from a key character in the tale, but Brownderville and Kenney didn’t initially set out to make an album, or even to form a musical project together.
“We connected through a mutual friend and I started working on music for Fire Bones,” says Kenney, who is originally from New England but moved to Texas as a kid. “I don’t know how we decided to make an album. I don’t know that we really did. It just kind of started happening.”
When it did, it generally went like this: Brownderville would write a folk song, more or less, and share it with Kenney, who would then sculpt the sound of the song by adding synths and other layers to the arrangement, relying on ideas of his own and input from Brownderville.
Kenney came along at a critical moment in the making of Fire Bones, Brownderville says, and he proved to be an easy communicator, an intuitive collaborator and a breath of fresh air.
“We have an unusual affinity, and you can hear it in our songs. He would play parts that were never the same things I would’ve done, but I always loved what he did,” says Brownderville. “We have different sensibilities, but they work really well together. I could see early on that he was making everything better.”
Specifically, “Kenney gave the songs a higher sky,” says Brownderville. When asked to elaborate, Brownderville’s voice noticeably intensifies as he digs into the sonic effects of their shared efforts: “After he’d work on (a song) for a while, I always had this feeling that it was much more spacious,” says Brownderville. “He would open up air inside the song’s space, and it would go from being two-dimensional to feeling three-dimensional. And I loved that.”
You can hear that lush and limitless vibe throughout Beekeeper Spaceman. Lead single “Icicles” is, says Brownderville, “a demented Christmas song” that ambles like a bummed-out, beat-driven Beach Boys tune as the song’s main character explores the tug-of-war between the freedom of youth and the domesticity of adult relationships: “You wanna stay much longer than the night,” Brownderville sings. “Walk away. I’m lonely by design.”
Later, “In the Custody of Stars” is a beautiful, sparkling ballad that takes inspiration from a character in Fire Bones and is framed in photographic imagery: Brownderville invokes out-of-focus lenses and blurry backgrounds to paint a picture of heartache and solitude as Kenney dresses up a simple acoustic guitar arpeggio with programmed drums, ethereal background vocals and twinkling synths.
“There’s an idea in ‘Icicles’ that if you want to keep the adventure alive, you have to be all by yourself,” says Brownderville. “In ‘Custody of Stars,’ there’s a sense that that’s not really true, and that the magic and the adventure can be in the togetherness.”
Elsewhere, the slinky lounge-pop tune “All and Only” finds Brownderville reflecting on our near-universal experience with unrequited love against a juxtaposition of strummed acoustic guitar and shimmering electric piano sounds, while “Locusts and Honey” uses an assertive bass line, unconventional rhythmic shifts, spectral vocal harmonies and abstract lyrics to create an irresistibly odd tune that sounds like Father John Misty singing in a hall of mirrors built on unstable ground. “Beebe”—a modern interpretation of an English nursery rhyme—is Beekeeper Spaceman at their most Beatles-esque, and album opener “Ninety Five” sports a crunchy post-punk feel and a steadfast sense of sadness about the fact that most of us grow out of childlike wonder.
Creative wonder, however, abounds on Beekeeper Spaceman’s debut, where handcrafted folk tunes blossom over and over again into strange and engaging electro-pop songs stuffed with synthesized sounds, exposed roots of acoustic guitar, surreal stories and intriguing arrangements that feel like vibrant little worlds unto themselves.
“I wanted to incorporate the idea of a ‘wonder soldier’—someone who builds their life around it,” says Brownderville. “This feeling of endless adventure, if you can manage to keep it alive. When people have given up on the idea of adventure and joy, I find that to be truly heartbreaking.”
Generous support provided by SMU English.
“A lush ballad… mesmerizing… Brownderville’s blurry soundscapes create a feeling of heartache and loneliness.” – FAME Magazine
“Consistently mellow pairing of indie rocket science and soundtrack-apt cinematic flourishes.” – KUTX / Song of the Day
“There is a lush and limitless vibe throughout Beekeeper Spaceman, where handcrafted folk tunes blossom over and over again into strange and engaging electro-pop songs stuffed with synthesized sounds, exposed roots of acoustic guitar, surreal stories and intriguing arrangements that feel like vibrant little worlds unto themselves. – The Big Takeover
“A daring, genre-defying work of fiction designed specifically for your smartphone. If all this sounds overly conceptual, the story itself is anything but. Imagine a formally inventive take on Twin Peaks or True Detective, and you start to get the picture.” – Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Fire Bones“
Lumbering synths in Brownderville’s song “Beebe” rollick beneath… a collection of poems and a fresh takeon narrative and lyrical expression.” – The Hopkins Review on Fire Bones
“A whimsical Southern Gothic story that follows a poet and a filmmaker as they unravel the mystery of a missing pilot and Pentecostal preacher who vanished on a transatlantic flight.” – MovieMaker Magazine on Fire Bones