POP MUSIC REVIEW : Honeyed Retro From Voice of Beehive

Somewhere between the classic girl groups of the early ‘60s and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun� spirit of the early ‘80s came Jackie DeShannon, proving that a woman could make great pop music without being totally dependent on help from the guys. At the Palace on Wednesday, Voice of the Beehive--a London-based quintet fronted by former Valley girl sisters Tracey and Melissa Belland--accomplished the same thing in early ‘90s terms.

In fact, about half of the Beehive’s 75-minute set recalled DeShannon’s best mid-’60s hits: chipper, clever pop songs with some depth beneath their attractive surfaces. The guitar-pop music was retro without sounding archaic; the lyrics implicitly feminist without making a point of it, stressing independence without being strident.

And never did the Bellands--redhead Melissa wearing a pink tutu and her hair in long pigtails--let us forget that, well, girls (and women) do want to have fun. The half of the songs that didn’t recall DeShannon recalled the quirky B-52’s.

The one problem is that these Bees always cook with honey, and what they served Wednesday was just a bit too sweet and not quite as nourishing as you might hope.

Ditto for opening act the Odds, who played a half hour of nice power-pop highlighted by a couple of memorable songs. But overall, the Vancouver quartet is interchangeable with the handful of other current bands that have added nothing to the definitive contemporary power-pop of Crowded House and the Smithereens.