Album: The Bees, Every Step's a Yes (Fiction)

Though something of a letdown after the splendid Octopus, there's still much to enjoy about Every Step's a Yes, which as usual arrives steeped in a mulch of musical influences from the heritage era of rock classicism.

"Silverline", for instance, carries echoes of several Tim Hardin songs, melodically and thematically, while "Skill of the Man" resembles a Pink Floyd pastoral piece, with the album's most wistful tune, and its least impressive line ("the jester claiming to be a king") book-ending the psychedelic whimsy. Elsewhere, the band's fecund array of influences sprouts via the range of abstruse instrumentation - wisps of electric sitar, recorders, dulcimer, Latin percussion, reggae horns - decorating the songs' core structures of organ and acoustic guitar. But the songs themselves are low-key and unexceptional.

DOWNLOAD THIS Pressure Makes Me Lazy; Skill of the Man; No More Excuses