David Beeman Is One of This Year's STL 77

This year ​the RFT recognizes ​St. Louis' ​stellar music scene by presenting the STL 77, ​our list of 77 acts who did big things in the last twelve months. From now through June 17, the date of our huge annual music festival ShowcaseSTL, we'll be announcing two ​honorees per weekday on our music blog. For more information on STL 77, as well as the complete lineup for ShowcaseSTL, go here.

Pay attention to that cold tingle sliding down your spine as you listen to David Beeman’s handful of new songs. It may be partly shock that this full-strength, major-label grade material was written and produced right here in St. Louis. But it’s also probably a trickling sense of shame and pain from a breakup you thought you’d gotten over and are now viscerally re-living. Beeman is a masterful pop classicist on technical grounds — instantly memorable vocals and melodies, evocative instrumentation, highly stylized production — but it’s the lyrics that raise his songs to the rock heavens, transmuting painfully intimate lived experience into pop breakthroughs. Not that it all sounds “sad”: Taking cues from Father John Misty, for whom he works as soundman, Beeman’s newest material is confident, lush, even sometimes jaunty. And the effect is ultimately catharsis, for the listener at least. What it brings the singer is less clear.

Recommended if you like: Father John Misty, Big Star, Angel Olsen, the Shins

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.beeman.3
Bandcamp: https://davidbeeman.bandcamp.com/