“Pachuca Sunrise”
from the album Menos el Oso
2005
iTunes
Download a free MP3 of “Pachuca Sunrise” from the band’s website
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Out of indie rock’s touchy-feely primordial ooze comes a band with a backbone.
Minus the Bear’s Menos el Oso (that’s Spanish for Minus the Bear) won’t establish the Seattle band as a hard-as-nails outfit or even a moderately peppy power-pop outfit. It’s an evolutionary step forward for a couple indie sub-species (Death Cab’s jangly pop and Müm’s ambience) whose invertebrate introspection’s helped to establish the genre as a clearinghouse for emotionally vulnerable and serially depressed white kids.
Perfecting its mix of math-rock complexities, bedroom-pop melodies and new-era atmospherics as it ditches the curiously comedic song titles that haunted its previous albums, Minus the Bear enters into indie rock’s big leagues with its fourth long-player. Like its predecessors, Menos el Oso taps into a legacy that touches on everything from the genre’s omnipresent Death Cab and Dismemberment Plan allusions to less likely nods to Juno, Prefuse 73 and Joan of Arc abound. Unlike the band’s previous efforts, this time out Minus the Bear has the skill to make it disparate influences jell into something new.
Minus the Bear’s wit is as sharp as ever on this one, even if its wits are channeled more into witty songwriting that out-and-out comedy. There’s really nothing to complain about, though, as Menos el Oso is chalk full of indie-rock goodness. Whether you come for the chaotic math-rock arrangements and stay for the melodies or revel in the atmospheres and take the whip-smart command of pop songwriting as a bonus, Menos el Oso is a sharp album. “Memphis and 53rd” bubbles with reverb-drenched guitars that bounce between sounding like surf music’s long-lost cousin and straightforward indie rock while the band swaps out one dreamscape atmosphere after another. In “Michio’s Death Drive,” the band once again messes with atmosphere, though resorts to the old-fashioned interplay of jangly-to-rockin’ guitars, bass and drum. “Fulfill the Dream” and “The Fix” dabble in strangely evocative, yet sparse lyrics, to show the band’s just as rounded in its lyrics department as anywhere else.
If there’s a shortcoming with Minus the Bear’s latest, it’s that the band makes the whole thing sound too easy, too effortless and too slick. Menos el Oso‘s put together so tight the math-rock twists and turns aren’t tortured. The band’s synthetic elements fluidly blend with its organic parts. Vocals come and go without sounding to heavy-handed. Somehow, Menos el Oso avoids all indie-rock clichés. It’ll take a sharp ear, however, to recognize that. Menos el Oso is so seamlessly put together it may take a well listened ear to see the act for all its talents, rather than just a simple indie pop outfit.