It’s the heaviness, the heaviness that hits you. Its riffs, skull-crunching, guitar-driven forces, and revved up sounds coming at you, 600 miles per hour. For guitarist Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen and her trio, she doesn’t play guitar like she means to, she plays it hard, down, and dirty when it comes to the heavy forces of nature, embarking on this massive thunderstorm approaching.
Her latest album on the Rune Grammofon label entitle Bees In The Bonnet, will make you think its 1972 all over again. Its raunchiness, insane complexity, and powering arrangements will make your jaws drop to go back and listen to it again and ask yourself, “What the hell was that?” Because Hedvig herself, she won’t take shit from anybody.
It had been four years since the trio unleashed a new album after their 2021 release Ding Dong. You’re Dead, but they had proven themselves with a lot of energy inside their hearts to keep going and never make a pit stop for anyone. For drummer Ivar Loe Bjornstad, and bassist Ellen Brekken, they know how to keep the wildfires spreading throughout the entirety on Bees In The Bonnet.
The moment you hear ‘See See Bop’, you think of AC/DC’s Malcolm and Angus Young’s heavy guitar textures that speak of ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap’. Because that’s what Hedvig wants to do, make it down and dirty like no other. She wants to prove herself that she’s more than just a jazz guitarist, but play different kinds of genres.
You think motorcycles, Peter Fonda, Hell’s Angels, the 1966 B-Movie classic of Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels, and Nancy Sinatra, this is very much an alternate soundtrack to the movie that Hedvig wished she had done while returning back to form with its complex and insane fret-work she endures behind the ‘Golden Griffin’ she and her fellow comrades endure.
And we’re not talking about Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page, we’re talking about Robert Fripp, Alex Lifeson, John McLaughlin, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Ritchie Blackmore, Terje Rypdal, and Andy Latimer from Camel. This composition is the proof inside the pudding she wants listeners to delve into. Hedvig knows her source material very well when it comes to the guitarist she grew up listening to.
Once the surrealism kicks into eeriest introduction throughout the ‘Itta’, it almost reminded me of the introduction to Marc Bolan & T. Rex’s ‘Get It On (Bang a Gong)’. Hedvig is putting on her glam costume and imagine its 1972 where the Glam Rock movement was kickin’. She’s honouring Bolan’s arrangements, but with attitude, followed by sinister tones and slithering orientations that’ll make you shit your pants, nonstop!
But I almost felt a little tug to the Space-Rock voyages she endures, honouring the late, great Manuel Gottsching during the first Ash Ra Tempel album where she takes her guitar throughout our solar system with reverb effects on lead and heavy loop riffs that come into the fold. ‘Bob’s Your Giddy Aunt’ shows Hedvig’s sense of humor.
When you hear a title like that, you think of the Ren & Stimpy shorts, the Bob Clampett-era of Looney Tunes, or the Fleischer cartoons that comes to mind instead of the Disney, happy-go-lucky bullshit of Mickey Mouse. This is Hedvig making music for the shorts that fires all cylinders where she makes her instrument go haywire as Ivar follows her experimentations with this drum pattern before Brekken comes into her laid-back grooves on the bass.
After the first four heavier compositions, the trio take a breather by going into a cool, smooth 1950s approach with a bluesy, clean arrangement in this black-and-white film-making style of the French new wave for the ‘Lamament’ to begin. You can hear a cross between Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, The Doors, Black Sabbath’s ‘Planet Caravan’, and John Coltrane’s Blue Train rolled into one as the trio embark on this ambient, meditated guidance in hand to give some kind of closure before they bring it all to an end on ‘Apocalypse Slow’.
This is where it really gets cookin! Once, they’re all geared up and revved up their engines one more time, it becomes a volcanic eruption for Hedvig to unleash hell like there’s no tomorrow. There’s a sense of pure energy, pure heat, and pure heat levels going up to reach that maximum level of unbelievable results. Raw, in your face, brutal, and down to the bone, Hedvig comes out swinging to bring the Bees knees with the flavour of incredible results!
