Thao "We Brave Bee Stings and All" (Kill Rock Stars)
By Marc Labelle
Monday. Apr 14, 2:09 PM
A delightful, easy album of catchy ditties.

According to Thao Nguyen, the 23 year-old Virginia-based singer-songwriter, she grew up playing guitar at the age of 12 in order to accompany the television programs she enjoyed watching. Her first musical dream was to appear on the soundtrack of Party of Five. Though that particular show has been off the air for eight years now, Thao’s career is just beginning to blossom.

We Brave Bee Stings and All is Thao’s second full-length. The title itself reflects the album’s theme: childlike fears as a form of strength. Thao at times sounds innocent, naïve, yet with the heart and concerns of an adult. “We don’t dive, we cannonball” she sings on “Swimming Pools,” which, despite sounding like a kid’s boasting, is in fact a feminist song.

Musically, Thao is backed by equally childish sounding The Get Down Stay Down. As Thao strums her acoustic guitar with a toothbrush or a sharpie pen, The Get Down Stay Down keenly follow along, employing horns, banjos, and keyboards to create a full, upbeat, dynamic, solid sound. Whether it’s bluegrass-tinged banjos or catchy, kitschy Weezer-like pop gems, the whole is playful yet well developed.

Opener “Beat (Health, Life, and Fire)" is a country-esque song with horns. The percussion, which resemble Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” marries beautifully with the full orchestration. “Bag of Hammers” has Thao bragging that, though she too can sting, her singing is meant to be soothing “like a lick of ice cream.” Once again, we a are presented with this dichotomy of an infant’s innocence with the venom of a jaded adult.

Thao has been described as a beat boxing “Cat Power in cowboy boots.” In fact, this is a very apt description: her playful façade always hints at her vulnerable, sensitive inner strife. There is an almost suburban claustrophobia winding its way throughout the record.

The strongest aspect of We Brave Bee Stings and All is Thao’s sense of melody. She spits “we splash our eyes full of chemicals / just so there’s none left for little girls” with a whirling ease. The soul-train feel of “Geography” has a charming swagger. Throughout the song she poses rhetorical questions that, in the chorus, are dismissed with a futile “I don’t know.”

Though it is unlikely that Thao will ever appear on a soundtrack for Party of Five, We Brave Bee Stings and All is a delightful, easy album of catchy ditties. A weakness, perhaps, lies in the fact that, like many contemporary "indie" acts – emotions, though heavy at times – are dismissed with a grain of ironic salt. Nevertheless, her ability to spin these melodies – each song champions the previous song’s infectious assault – solidifies Thao as a force worth reckoning with, despite the bee stings.
www.thaomusic.com
www.killrockstars.com

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Marc Labelle

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