Tweelicious with a bit of punch

With a heading of neo-psychedelia on All Music Guide and honey dripping from their organ and auxiliary percussion-fused sound, Paul Butler and Aaron Fletcher of A Band of Bees are here with a depth of pleasantries. With substance disguised by jazz-fusion influenced sounds, Sunshine Hit Me is an LP of sonically-removed intimacy. \nThe band's first full-length, with tracks from its 2001 EP Punchbag, will take you to a flowered field with little animal dens littering the undergrowth. The lyrics, "You smell like a punchbag, I'm too much for a cage of monkeys" bear images instead of explicit storylines. The sound, with tinges of reggae and happy-rock, give you a feeling instead of a plot. Spewn with major chords and bouncy punches, it's a formula that makes for quite a bit of sunshine with a few clouds following along to let you know the world isn't intrinsically happy, but what you make of it and beautiful all the same. \nPutting the apex at track six is a spectacular cover of obscure '60s Brazilian band Os Mutantes' "Minha Menina." I can't translate, but it's a song about fantastic love and infatuation and that girl that holds your heart so dearly she can only be described by roses, silver moons and crescendoed choruses, and two unrestrained "dop-ba-doo-wops"