Bull’s infectiously fun and feverish sophomore album ‘Engines of Honey’ is sun-kissed, psych-soaked indie rock at its finest: An unapologetically energetic, exhilarating record made with good times in mind.
for fans of The Beatles, The Kinks, MGMT
Stream: “Start a New” – Bull
I dare you to listen to Engines of Honey and not smile.
Bull’s sophomore album is a sweet, seductive slice of sonic sunshine; an effervescent fever dream of swooping guitars and soaring melody lines that invites its listeners to be bold and dream big, no matter the situation.
Heartfelt, charming, and infectiously fun, Engines of Honey is sun-kissed, psych-soaked indie rock at its finest: An unapologetically energetic, exhilarating record made with good times in mind.
I want to start anew
Somewhere without you
Somewhere the sky is blue
And I don’t want to look at you
While you fake all your feelings
I’m searching for something true
Unpleasantness has got me down
But I seem to invite it
I want to turn back around
And start again somehow
Submerge myself in an ocean
Far away from the maddening crowd
– “Start A New,” Bull
Independently released March 1st, 2024, Engines of Honey is bold, bright, brash, and beaming. The follow-up to their much-beloved debut album Discover Effortless Living and 2022’s Stuck Between the Virtual and Physical World EP sees Bull at home and confidently in their element, all while pushing themselves and their sound forward to new heights.
The band – comprised of vocalist and songwriter Tom Beer, guitarist Dan Lucas, keyboardist Holly Beer, drummer Tom Gabbatiss, and bassist Kai West – proudly describe themselves as “York’s finest purveyors of jangling indie joy,” and that rings especially true on Engines of Honey as they treat audiences to a radiant ensemble of spirited harmonies, irresistible choruses, and fiery, face melting guitar solos.
“The album was recorded over a long period,” frontman Tom Beer tells Atwood Magazine. “It was originally a set of over 20 songs, whittled down a bit, with a very ambitious but slightly fragmented recording style and work ethic. Our vision was to go further than we had before and make everything sound amazing, varied, lush, etc. We had to give up on perfection, as maybe everyone always has to, and we also binned a fair amount of songs. We always keep working on the tracks until the end, but you have to stop somewhere.”
Recorded with Remko Schouten at his Ijland Studio in Amsterdam and back home in York, Engines of Honey is comfortably uncomfortable – its catchy, charged songs a product of healthy amounts of experimentation and risks taken both in the studio and in the band’s songwriting.
“I think there’s some classic Bull sounding songs, like ‘Start A New’ and ‘Imaginary Conversations,’ but we’ve also tried to expand on what we could do with recording more,” Holly Beer says. “Probably having the mic at home meant we had more time to figure out parts on other instruments, like cello, trombone or violin, and we were able to have friends ‘round to do group backing vocals and more brass parts.”
“I think this album marks a return to more familiar territory for Bull compared to our Stuck Between The Virtual And Physical World EP, which saw us experimenting with synths and drum machines, and wackier songwriting,” Dan Lucas adds. “It was fun to be back in the studio focusing more on guitars and vocal arrangements, letting the songs lead the production.”
“I hope it just shows we have lots more songs and we’re gonna keep recording them,” Tom Beer smiles. “We’re not afraid to try some stuff, which might not always work, and hopefully our best is still to come!”
Can’t remember how it even started,
I’d been working so efficiently
Now they’re coming and they do it spited,
And I just don’t know what to believe.
Now I’m feeling like my head exploded,
And I’ve got to get away from you,
Now I’m getting everything I wanted,
So I better find my next excuse
Beer candidly describes Engines of Honey as overkill pop rock.
The album’s title comes from a lyric in the song “Stranger” – one of the record’s standouts.
“We decided we like our albums to always have a miscellaneous lyric from one of the songs,” Tom Beer explains. “We thought it sounded kind of on the nose in a Teenage Fanclub, radical rocker kind of righteous way. To me it signifies the work ethic of the band, the dream, the sound.”
Highlights abound on the journey from the album’s sunny and spirited opener “Start a New” to its raucous, rousing finale, “Sid.” Between the buoyant warmth of “Stranger,” the dreamy cheer of “One Green Eye,” the hypnotic bounce of “Imaginary Conversations, and the feverish churn of “Jan Fin,” Engines of Honey has a little something for everyone – whether it’s fast n’ furious rockers, lush psychedelic serenades, quirky left-of-center pop tunes, or music that doesn’t fit into any clean box.
“I like that ‘Head Exploder’ is fairly simple, that it comes off as a good honest track, and I like the sound of it best for that reason,” Tom Beer says. “I like the first solo in ‘Head Exploder,’ I like the second chorus of ‘Stranger,’ I like the third verse of ‘Red Rooves.’ And I like the clap in ‘Crick.’”
“I like ‘Start A New’ as it’s sort of viciously pointed and succinct (for me, not my strong point),” he adds, “but I also sort of disagree with it, and most of the things in the songs. That’s kind of how it works; you feel something for ten minutes, not forever, so you can kind of appreciate it, but you don’t feel the same again. I like the line ‘imaginary anger used to stall my pride’ in ‘Imaginary Conversations.’ I think the lyric ‘now I’m getting everything I wanted, so I better find my next excuse’ is pretty neat. Somebody commented recently they like ‘struggle, but not forever’ in ‘Weston-Super-Mare’ and I thought, ‘actually yeah, that is quite good’ (in the context), so that was nice. I quite like ‘a lifestyle is not an excuse for a personality,’ but it’s a bit self-righteous.”
Upon Engines of Honey‘s release, Tom Beer said that the album is “fun, messy, and hopefully memorable.”
And to his credit, he was right on all three counts.
Bull’s second record hits in unexpected, but endlessly alluring ways – taking listeners on a rip-roaring rollercoaster ride that leaves us, as expected, with a massive smile on our faces.
“I hope people can enjoy it and stick it on and maybe get something out of it, like a lyric here and there or a nice bit of guitar,” Tom Beer shares. “People often say to us that they like listening to it on headphones and every time they listen to it, they hear something different. And when they see us play live, they like that we take it in different directions.”
“I have taken away that if you’re gonna do something, do it quickly and succinctly; don’t f* about, and maybe set yourself some parameters. We’re happy to be working on new music and looking forward to recording in new ways.”
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Bull’s Engines of Honey with Atwood Magazine as the band take us track-by-track through the music and lyrics of their sophomore album!
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:: stream/purchase Engines of Honey here ::
:: connect with Bull here ::
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Stream: ‘Engines of Honey’ – Bull
:: Inside Engines of Honey ::
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Start A New
Tom B: This was sort of the first song written for the album, I wrote it after getting back from a tour which ended abruptly due to COVID. Lots of yearning and frustration and anger and catharsis. The lyrics came out very quickly. First ‘new song’ of the album.
Head Exploder
Tom B: This was the last song written for the album, I wrote it while walking the 10 minute walk from my house to my parents house a few years after I wrote start a new and had moved back to York from Scarborough where I was living. I recorded a voice note on my phone, it’s about realising you were wrong and burning out. We recorded it very fresh very shortly after it was written and I think the recording has quite a natural, not overdone feeling as a result.
Red Rooves
Tom B: Speaking of natural and not overdone…this recording was like a three year production and we still didn’t get it how we (or at least I) might have wanted it, but there are some good bits. From very humble beginnings, the song was just written on a reeely bad guitar which had two or three strings on it, playing a makeshift three chord riff. I wrote it by recording it as a demo and making up lyrics on the spot while recording into garage band and looking out of the window in Scarborough. This was the second song written for the album.
Weston-Super-Mare
Tom B: This one I wrote the song in one I think and did another little demo and wrote the riff which I thought was pretty neat. Fun fact the song doesn’t say weston-super-mare in it but in band practice I was free-styling a third verse which I was meaning to write (ended up just re-singing the first as I never did it) and weston-super-mare just came out as it scanned with the rhythm of the song. So we ended up calling it that, never been there.
Imaginary Conversations
Tom B: This was I think probably the third song I wrote for the album, it’s I think maybe the first and only song I’ve ever actually managed to use which I wrote after waking up at 4am. I wake up quite often in the middle of the night and I started doing it all the time in covid, think I was drinking too much water before bed. Anyway, I wrote this about not being able to sleep, about going over conversations I’d had before and then about the feeling that sometimes peoples (and my own) relationships are made up not just of real conversations that actually happened, but also things that might have happened and that both of you feel like have happened with some weird sixth sense. One of my best friends said something similar to me once so a lot of the second half of the song ends up being about that. It is exactly as I wrote it in my phone notes, there’s a difference between phone notes songs, little book songs and straight into garage band songs. Sorry that was way more than four sentences!
Stranger
Tom B: I wrote the first half of this on the keyboard, at my girlfriend’s parents’ house. I didn’t really manage to figure out what the lyrics were supposed to be about, something about the police or something, I just liked the chords and the tune, Tom Gabbatiss on drums sings the chorus as he’s got a much stronger voice than me and there was no way I was getting that high! The second half of the song is another 4am one but a few years later than imaginary conversations. It was quite a lot longer but I cut some. It’s quite a personal, I suppose, poem. It covers a lot of ground – I like how it sort of resolves. I’m calming myself down after a bit of a torturous late night session of self reflection and probably a bit of hatred, I’m sorry to say. I like the last line, cheesy or not – “and in this sweet song I find my place.” It’s quite a nice recording but again a very tricky one, I’m quite proud of the trumpet line which I recorded on my tod and Toms voice sounds great in the chorus.
Jan Fin
Tom B: This song is way old, it was written, very angsty and vague in about 2012? I think I would have been 18 when it was written. It feels like a very teenage thing, we put it on the album as we still like playing the riff and the funkyish feel and expansive nature of it, you can play it a million ways, I love the chords. The recording is a bit confused maybe… Like I say, there’s a million ways to play it, and we tried to do them all in one recording, some fun moments though like dan’s thin lizzy / toto guitar break.
Febo
Tom B: This one is a wacky one, written quite late in the album’s development, I wrote it on piano, the sort of very simple pachabells cannon wannabe sudo classical harpsichord thing. I really liked it for a bit as I thought we had the feel right on the recording, I think I preferred earlier versions of the recording, we spent so long on this album things kept changing and you loose things you liked. The lyrics were mumbled into my phone and then. I transcribed my own mumble to the best of my ability. This is another way I’ve figured out that I can write songs, it’s really easy. You just have a tune and then you freestyle not really saying words, record it and then do your best to turn it into words. There are a couple of phrases I like but it’s mostly weird for some reason latently sexual and bollocks. But I like the line “patience and keenness and everything between” which I was sort of impressed came out of my subconscious as it at least sort of makes sense.
Holly B: The song is named after a chain of Dutch fast food automat restaurants because of the lyric ‘my heart is an automat’, and because we love the chips and oorlog.
Do It for the Money
Tom B: Another wacky one, I wrote it in lockdown, Kai calls it ‘the educational song’. It’s got a bit of the Jonathon Richman, kids TV vibe about it…the recording is ridiculous!
Crick
Tom B: Kai wrote this – over to Kai West! I will say the recording is very layered, quite happy with some of the arrangement work we did on it, some good parts, again very ambitious and complex with one million overdubs!
Kai: This song was from a batch of about 5 I wrote at a certain point in lockdown after having an uncomfortably long time to reflect on a lot of stuff. I think lyrically I’m quite proud of it. This song really demonstrates (to me) why working in a band of people you respect musically is so great – sonically it sounds absolutely nothing like how I imagined it would, nor would I have ever done it like that myself. But I really like how it came out, and I think that’s an awesome thing.
One Green Eye
Tom B: I like the lilting rhythm thing quite a lot and the big thief esq high hanging notes in the choruses.
Holly B: I love this one, it’s one of my favourites. I like how intimate it feels at the start and the way it builds. Tom G added a nice guitar part in the outro which reminds me of CBeebies (but in a good way.)
Sid
Tom B: Ben Beatie on guest saxophone. We wanted a big synthy sound, plus Tom G on stone roses drums. I like the funny sort of samba (?? I’m really guessing here) style sousaphone trombone and trumpet syncopated trio, thing which walk off at the end, we had a lot of fun working out that part and recording it, fun live at our album launch gig in York too.
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:: stream/purchase Engines of Honey here ::
:: connect with Bull here ::
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