A lone bee buzzes into sight and hovers by the Honeysuckle flowers of the six-foot high Queen of the Meadow, seeking Nectar, the drink of the gods. The insect floats from one flower to the next, the whirring of its wings faster than human pupils can follow. But more than for nutritional fulfillment, this bee dances for death and love and war, all one in the same: thoughts of past betrayal in a post-life.

But before any of this, someone leaves a promo of the Elysian Fields' Queen of the Meadow on my desk.

According to Greek mythology, the blessed are sent to the Elysian Fields after death. The fields are considered beatific and glorious, where one enjoys perfect happiness. But the ideal state induced by these fields can also be tragic: Cadmus and Harmonia, leaders of the Encheleans in their defeat of the Illyrians, were sent to the Elysian Fields after being turned to serpents by Zeus. Their serpent forms are perfectly happy there, despite being unaware of how much greater their enjoyment would be in human form. Ignorance is bliss, yes, but often unfortunate, too. So, while the Elysian Fields seem a pastoral paradise, there are also sinister implications.

The bee-emulating violin that starts off the album's opener, "Black Acres," is a perfect example of this contradiction: it's bucolic, yet mildly threatening. Accompanied by a rumbling piano and deliberate guitar strums and plucks, the emotive, meandering violin becomes a stage device of Greek tragedy.

The Elysian Fields' lyrics are often vague with some unfortunate rhymes. In a hushed, portentous voice, frontwoman Jennifer Charles sings, "Whirlwind, take me there/ Where I will be his lady fair." But it's not just the lyrics; it's how Charles delivers them that makes the ambiguity and rhymes somehow more necessary to evoking a grand, yet pastoral, landscape, as only the Greeks and Romans knew it.

"Bayonne," the next number, maintains the mood with reverberated drums and a subtle organ. When Charles' voice enters, it floats in, between, around, and away from both ears-- sometimes studio-crisp, other times reverbed or deadened-- lending more dark instability to the vertiginous lines, "I thought he'd never take it this far/ I can see where this is going as the undertow is pulling me down." The clincher is when she raises her pitch on "down," pulling you along as she drifts away.

But then, the sound changes. "Bend Your Mind" shocks with fuzzy synths and cheap electric chord progressions more similar to the Cars or the Eurythmics than, say, Mazzy Star (whom the Elysian Fields most resemble). "Dream Within a Dream" sounds like a Midwestern lounge ballad, if there is such a thing. "Fright Night," rather than an homage to the 1985 Roddy McDowell horror classic, is a near-campy Halloween song. And "Tides of the Moon" combines early David Bowie and formative Neil Young with some success, but peaks with the rather disappointing line, "And I feel I could die."

Finally, on the title track, Queen of the Meadow returns to the thematic sound that should have governed the entire album. Bringing bongos into the mix, as well as a male lead, the song is idyllic, but nonetheless mysterious. "I'm in league with the Queen of the Meadow," the man sings, soon joined by Charles on the chorus: "I'm peaceful in her loving arms." Sadly, the record ends on a sour and forgettable note with "Cities Will Fall," and then it's over.

Instead of the strong, almost conceptual album that could have been, Queen of the Meadow has only a few songs befitting the band's name and record's title. While not notably poor, the other songs aren't particularly exceptional, either. After all, in these modern times, Queen of the Meadow is not an immortal hero's wife, but a plant that's harvested as an herbal remedy for rheumatism, gout, and to induce urination. Not quite the Nectar of the Gods, is it?

-Ryan Kearney