Voice of the Beehive were one of the great should-have-beens of late 80s/early 90s pop. They released two brilliant albums, their debut Let It Bee (1988) and follow up Honey Lingers (1991). Both albums are pop masterpieces, wall-to-wall full of great songs that are catchy enough to have been huge hit singles yet retain the band’s personality and quirkiness. Sisters Tracey Bryn (guitar, vocals) and Melissa Brooke Belland (vocals) were pop culture mavens from LA who moved to London to form a band, and recruited British musicians Mike Jones (guitar), Martin Brett (bass guitar) and ex-Madness drummer Daniel Woodgate to achieve their dreams of pop stardom. Voice of the Beehive had a unique sound, mixing power pop jangly guitars with dance-inflected beats. They brought the campy, pop culture infused sound of the B-52s and updated it with melodic guitar lines and harmonies worthy of the Bangles. With Bryn and Belland’s retrofuturist fashion sense, they looked great, and they had a kick-ass live show. And while both Let It Bee and Honey Lingers would modestly chart, the band’s wonderful singles never quite became the massive hits they so clearly deserved to be. Personal tragedies and record company disillusionment delayed third album Sex & Misery until 1996, by which point the original band had fragmented leaving only Bryn and Belland as core members, and whatever commercial momentum the band had generated from the first two albums had dissipated, and Voice of the Beehive called it quits soon after. How different it all should have been.
In 2022, London Records issued a remastered and expanded edition of Let It Bee, a lavish two-disc affair that collected the original album plus a wealth of alternate versions, single B-sides, demos and radio sessions and live recordings, many of which had never been issued before and others which had never been released on CD. It also comprehensive liner notes from Bryn, including reflections on each song, making it the definitive document for those interested in the early years of the band. Now in 2025 it’s Honey Lingers star turn, with another deluxe double CD package from London Records alongside vinyl releases. The care and attention that has gone into the reissue is admirable. Honey Lingers’ original ten tracks are expanded to a whopping 39. Again all the era’s B-sides and various alternate mixes are present and correct, as are a dizzying array of remixes, acoustic versions and live tracks. If it’s not quite as full of surprises as the Let It Bee reissue, it still contains an excellent album and a wealth of extra material that amply show what a great band Voice of the Beehive were in their prime.
Honey Lingers is more polished than Let It Bee, for better and for worse. Let It Bee received much critical adulation, but although the album peaked at number 13 in the UK charts and received plenty of college radio airplay in the states, it was felt by the record company that it hadn’t performed as well as it should have. Following a difficult promotional circuit, the band regrouped and focused instead on the American market. Produced with the help of eight different producers, ranging from indie stalwart Pat Collier to Don Was, Honey Lingers came dangerously close to being one of those classic second albums where a band’s identity is scrubbed away by overeager record company interference. Fortunately, Voice of the Beehive’s unique sound still manages to shine through, and the resulting album sounds and feels remarkably coherent. Whilst some of the quirky excesses of Let It Bee have been toned down, one gets the sense that Voice of the Beehive were a band who could thrive in a pop atmosphere, making it all the more frustrating that they never quite did. For all its effervescent pop brilliance, Honey Lingers charted at number 17 in the UK, below Let It Bee’s peak position, and again failed to chart in the US.
Because what an album of pop gems Honey Lingers is. Opener ‘Monsters and Angels’ was the closest Voice of the Beehive came to their elusive pop hit, charting in both the UK and the US. It’s a glorious slice of summery pop, all shimmering guitars and stomping beats, over which Bryn and Belland’s voices intertwine into a luscious chorus. And from the start, Bryn’s caustic sense of humour about relationships is right there at the fore. “I’m nobody’s wife and I’m nobody’s baby / I like it that way but then again maybe,” she sings, refusing to accept the idealised role of girlfriend or partner whilst admitting her own romantic longing. Voice of the Beehive revelled in subverting traditional pop archetypes, and many of Let It Bee’s best songs, from opener ‘Beat of Love’ to their previously biggest hit ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’, eloquently express disillusionment at the passiveness of female roles in traditional pop songs whilst emphasising the painful and difficult aspects of love. This lyrical focus continues just as strongly on Honey Lingers. ‘Adonis Blue’ imagines an idealised boyfriend before deflating him as an impossible illusion. ‘Little Gods’ is a pertinent dissection of how male entitlement starts in little boys and is coddled by an intrinsically misogynistic society. And the superlative ‘I’m Shooting Cupid’ sees Bryn calling out the god of love as her own personal enemy for how much he’s fucked up her life. Other songs tackle self-obsession and narcissism – the punchy ‘Look At Me’ could have been written for our current social media-fixated times, as Bryn viciously satirises humanity’s tendency to put its trivial need for attention ahead of the fate of the world itself: “Can't save the ocean but we sure can save a dime / We may all look good but I think we're running out of time.”
But the album is not without its moments of unbridled romanticism. ‘Beauty to my Eyes’ is perhaps Bryn’s most beautiful and sincere love song, a delicate ballad with swooning strings and gorgeous harmonies. ‘Just Like You’ bounces and shivers with romantic passion over a driving brassy Motown beat. A cover of the Partridge Family’s ‘I Think I Love You’ , another single that threatened to break through for the band but didn’t quite, somehow manages to pay tribute to and take the piss out of the original, but ultimately convinces in the sincerity of its sentiment. And the gorgeous ‘Perfect Place’ closes the album with a movingly elegiac reflection on growing up and trying to create a better world. This brings the original 32-minute album to a concise close, a punchy album of back-to-back great songs. How does it fair being expanded?
The first lot of bonus tracks are the original B-sides for the singles. ‘Waitress’, ‘Only If You Want To’, ‘Pocketsize’, ‘Something About God’ and ‘Shine Away’ are prime slices of Voice of the Beehive pop that could easily have been added to the original album, or indeed formed the basis for the third album. But Voice of the Beehive were committed to the single as an artform, which mean their singles frequently have excellent B-sides that are worth hearing in their own right. Similarly, unreleased track ‘Dumb Club’ is vintage Voice of the Beehive fun. However, you can also feel the shadow of record company encroachment – following ‘Dumb Club’ we get the first of a series of remixes and alternate versions. These are of varying interest – there are multiple dance remixes of ‘I Think I Love You’, none of which add much to the original, but there is a beautifully spare Pat Collier version of ‘Perfect Place’ that strips back a lot of the studio sheen of the final studio version, allowing the song’s emotion to shine through. An alternate version of ‘Monsters and Angels’ gets one’s hopes up about pre-record company interference versions of the album songs – the band tried a version of ‘I’m Shooting Cupid’ with sped-up verses, but sadly that doesn’t make an appearance here. We do get Voice of the Beehive’s cover of the Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’ with Jimmy Sommerville from a 1993 EP to raise funds for the homeless, which is more of historical interest than anything else.
After the classic B-sides, the highlights of the expanded package are acoustic versions of ‘Say It’, ‘I’m Shooting Cupid’ and ‘Perfect Place’ that close the first CD, and the recordings from their live gig at Kentish Town and Country Club which was recorded for Radio One that close the second CD. These recordings show that first and foremost Voice of the Beehive were a great band of great musicians. Freed of the restrictions of the carefully controlled studio versions, the songs get a chance to breathe. The acoustic versions show off the Beehive’s innate musicality, whilst the raucous fun of the live recordings prove that they were a bloody great live band, willing to embrace the fun and the chaos inherent in their vision of pop but utterly in control of where they were going. The show closes with a cover of James’ ‘Sit Down’ that effortlessly wipes the floor with the original.
All told, Honey Lingers remains a great album, and this reissue is an excellent package that brings the album back into print with a plethora of mostly excellent bonus material. Certainly it’s impossible to imagine a fan not wanting to hear this stuff. And while the double disc reissue may be less surprising in terms of its bonus content than its Let It Bee counterpart, it still makes an excellent case for Voice of the Beehive as one of the great pop bands that never was. Listen to it and marvel at their sheer pop brilliance.
