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Written by Alex Bates Wednesday, 06 February 2008 14:17

The songs are mellow getting mellower, and it's an easy album to listen to.

A band with a name like this may catch your eye, but keeping peoples' interest takes more than a title. If the name is a way to pull people in, then the album must do the rest of the work. Although Dirty on Purpose's new EP, Like Bees, sometimes sounds like one song instead of five separate tracks, it will keep your interest for as long as you can stay listening.

The album flows well from start to finish, filling with anticipation with the guitar-laden "Audience in the Room" and ending in repose with the instrumental "Airshow Disaster."

The songs are mellow getting mellower, and it's an easy album to listen to. It doesn't take any work; there's no need for active listening. The lyrics aren't very complex and often repeat.

The quiet vocals and similarity of the songs may cause your attention to shift, the album becoming background music. Don't be surprised if you start unconsciously tuning it out. Each track flows neatly into the next, almost causing one track to be indistinguishable from the others.

"Send Me an Angel" stands out not for having a different sound, but for the fact that it's a cover of a Real Life song from the 1980s. The band's other tie to that decade is to the shoegaze genre, characterized by pervasive guitar sounds and subdued lyrics, that it claims to be part of.

Like Bees is a nice flashback and proves that as much as things change, some things stay and sound the same. B | Alex Bates