New Studio Album By Bees In A Bottle: “The Sun Left And Took The Moon With It”
Bees In A Bottle’s Chad McAllister & Christine McAllister (photography By Corinne Devin Sullivan)
We sipped luckily on cortados, and matcha tea lattes. We nibbled on lemon earl grey cookies. We had followed the path to the cozy café tucked within booky street signs at Powell’s City of Books, and so we now smiled and chatted, or we worked on laptops. Outside large windows, the dignified city streets of Portland, Oregon, rushed.
Canned music lulled the backs of our brains. But a playlist ended. In that emptified moment, coffee shop patrons looked up, searched with their very souls. They began to see. Unity crept in. A speech or a comment could bind everyone.
My personal belongings went back inside my satchel. I thought, loftily, how well song answers the lingering effervescence enshrouding the sensation of many strangers waiting. Unchecked, “Adult 2023 People” can blurt hurtful and untimely things. I believe that songs are easier fodder.
I bid good-bye to the kind cashier (who is also a talented musician). He was garbed in a Music Millennium T-Shirt. That’s the independent record store I was headed to: a straight shot down Burnside Avenue.
“The Sun Left And Took The Moon With It” is the second studio album by Bees In A Bottle. At 6pm on Friday, April 14th, it would be officially released. Music creators Christine McAllister and Chad McAllister were scheduled to perform. They are a singer/songwriter and musician duo worth paying a lot of attention to. During the show, I thought about Candlebox, Natalie Merchant, and Florence and The Machine. Unquestionably, Bees In A Bottle have developed a tight sound that can be guessed at, yet never fully replicated.
The record store filled up. Christine McAllister stunned, with long, long coppery red locks, the moment she appeared upon the performance stage at Music Millennium, high up on the second floor balcony at the world-famous record store. Her husband took up the guitar, gentle and also respectful of his partner’s beautiful talent. Chad McAllister is appropriately grunge rock—even jarring at times. Then, he is yet subtle, mellowed with whispers and sighs of the guitar from fingers that bring the audience into the saddened world of Christine’s lyrics.
“The Sun Left And Took The Moon With It” presents ten songs constructed lyrically upon Christine McAllister’s ideas concerning the hardships endured by women. Each of her muses loved and lost a husband or partner, or child, in the public’s eye. These women bore grief and, at times, they bore shame and humiliation that automatically attaches itself to a suicide or a drug overdose. Inspiration, says Christine McAllister, came from many places. All of it brought her to a keener understanding of the dangers.
Fans were packed in, looking upward. Standing in the spaces below the balcony, attractive shelves and sales bins offered new and old vinyl, compact discs and cassettes. I caught a glimpse of Mr. Terry Currier, the owner. He has been helming Music Millennium for something like fifty years. He’s a well-known defender of independent record stores across the United States. Amidst many sneaky takeover tactics of the conglomerates since the 1980’s, Currier has championed the rights of free trade and fair business practices. He played the decisive role in launching Record Store Day nearly two decades ago, which brought the people back to vinyl, and vice versa.
I spoke to Christine and Chad afterwards. She commented upon the store and its very famous owner. Then we delved into her thoughts and musings about the lives of people she had wrote about. Like a woman in the wrong, she confessed, “I’ve been asking if anyone still takes the time to listen to a full work of music from start to finish.”
The cover art of “The Sun Left And Took The Moon With It” drew me to peel back the plastic, to look inside. Photography by Jay Eads portrays beautifully Sophia MacMillan of the Fermata Ballet Collective. Fermata is “a pause or hold of unspecified length on a note or rest in musical notation.” A message from Bees In The Bottle was printed in the liner notes: “To the resilient women who inspired this record. I think of you often. May you belong to yourself. May you know peace.”
Upon Burnside Avenue, the dignified city of Portland, Oregon, rushed past Terry Currier’s record store. The Oregon sky had darkened. Somewhere, in the houses and cars, fermata takes over within lives themselves. And within that timeless stretch, may “The Sun Left and Took The Moon With It” by Bees In A Bottle sing to us. Pick up their second studio album on compact disc at any independent record store, or visit the band’s website at https://beesinabottle.com/home.
Reviewed by Corinne Devin Sullivan