Photo Credit: Kat Schleicher
Collections of Colonies of Bees
Beyond guitarist Chris Rosenau, there haven’t been a lot of constants in the Milwaukee post-rock ensemble Collections of Colonies of Bees. For 20 years, the project has operated with a rotating lineup and a fluid vision, cutting ties with the past to run with whatever muse presents itself next. Yet even for a band that’s never been sentimental about change, Collections of Colonies of Bees’ latest evolution feels radical. “It’s completely unprecedented,” Rosenau says of the group’s new album, HAWAII. “This is the first Bees record with a lyrics sheet.”
Despite priding itself on operating without rules, it turns out the band had inadvertently clung to one: They’d always been an instrumental project, and Rosenau had assumed they’d always stay that way. So, when bandmate Daniel Spack pitched Rosenau on adding vocals to the group, he reflexively shot the idea down. In hindsight, he says, his logic was close-minded. “This is dumb,” Rosenau says, “but I was thinking if we’d been an instrumental band for 20 years and now we added vocals, people were going to think we were just doing it to be accessible.”
Nonetheless, the band was in the market for a change. The group had been on hiatus for a few years as members moved on to other projects—most notably, former keyboardist Nick Sanborn, who found success in North Carolina with his duo Sylvan Esso—when on a whim, Rosenau committed them to playing the 2017 Eaux Claires festival, despite not knowing what form their new set (let alone their new lineup) would take.
“We weren’t burnt out on the stuff we had been doing, but we definitely wanted something new,” Rosenau says. And eventually, after considering Spack’s repeated pitches to incorporate vocals, Rosenau landed on an angle that excited him. “We’d approach the vocals the way I normally approach the guitar, which is chopping them up and looping them live,” he says.
Resistant to using computers, the band instead assigned drummer Ben Derickson the task of building a custom rig to run those vocals through, and recruited singer Marielle Allschwang—also of Hello Death and Group of the Altos—to operate it. “There was just something about the sensibility and beauty of her voice and having these singular vocals in the middle of this bigger rock situation that was really interesting,” Rosenau says. “We invited her into the band without telling her that she’d have to work this completely new instrument.
”There was some learning involved. “It’s unlike anything I have ever played before, which was exciting and part of the appeal,” Allschwang says. “I think when I was first playing around with it, I was excited, because it allowed me to access this musical space that I haven’t gotten to explore before—this Terry Riley/Laurie Anderson ecstatic minimalism, which is part of what I’ve always loved about Bees.
“I wasn’t sure how vocals would fit into the band, but once I saw that I had this machine where I could layer chopped sounds, it made so much more sense right away,” Allschwang continues. “I was like, ‘OK, so I’m making these abstract textures and all these rhythms, but in a cool, more analogue way that’s up my alley.’ It’s a lot more tactile than a lot of electronic instruments I’ve encountered, so it felt more true to the way that I make music but also really compatible with what they’re doing.”
Presented in dreamy counterpart to Spack’s own hushed, unmanipulated vocals, Allschwang’s vocals are often front and center on HAWAII, yet they never disrupt the intricate instrumental interplay that’s always been Collections of Colonies of Bees’ signature. Ironically, Rosenau’s initial reservations came to pass: HAWAII is the band’s most accessible project by some distance, thanks largely to those vocals. But the album is accessible in the same way as Repave, the second release from Bees’ sister project, Volcano Choir, an uncompromised reimagining of pop music.
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“There have been a bunch of iterations of Bees that have felt new and exciting, but I think this one has the most potential to evolve,” Rosenau says. “With that vocal rig, I think we’ve only scratched the surface with the technology, so there’s a lot more that Ben can wrangle from that thing to make it sound more interesting. It’s informed our band brain so much it’s even changed how we write. From here, maybe the music could get weirder, because now it’s tethered to these more accessible kinds of vocal melodies. Or maybe the music gets super normal, and the vocals get way out. Or maybe both. There’s so many directions we could take it.”
HAWAII is out now on Polyvinyl. Collections of Colonies of Bees open for two sold-out Sylvan Esso shows at the Pabst Theater on Saturday, July 21, and Sunday, July 22. They’ll also play the Milwaukee Athletic Club's Aura Concert Series on Friday, Aug. 3 at 8 p.m., and the Washington Park Summer Concert Series on Wednesday, Aug. 8.
