Credit: Found On Internet

The Bees are one of those bands who buzz (sorry) around the periphery of the indie world, without ever landing a killer blow, like deliberating stinging that wheezing kid with the thick spectacles who has an allergy to insect venom. Okay, that’s the last time I’ll use a bee analogy, I promise.

Lead single, “Who Cares What the Question Is?”, is folk if it was played by The Six Million Dollar Man. It’s Chas & Dave does steampunk, but it’s as exciting as this album gets. This is the kind of record that people have pub lunches on a Sunday to.

It’s veering so dangerously close to being twee. Despite the wonderfully paranoid hammond organ and serpentine brass playing on “Left Foot Stepdown”, it still could be the backing music to a section on Saturday Kitchen. The soulful reggae flecks of “Listening Man” could just about get an appreciative nod along to the beat – but that would be the peak of involvement they could dredge from the listener. And the ridiculous sampling on album closer “End Of The Street” sounds like the kind of thing a gaggle of stoned students would think is the greatest idea ever. For anyone not undergoing the undergraduate narcotics experience, it’s just kind of embarrassing.

While “Octopus” isn’t a bad record by anyone’s estimation, only the most flaccid-eared panic-attack sufferers could ever consider it to be their favourite record of all-time. And I think that’s where my gripe comes from – the band have taken no risks, they’ve sat happily in the niche they carved out with “Free The Bees” and ploughed out ten ‘acceptable’ tracks.

“Octopus” is out on Virgin Records on March 26.