Music Review - Minus the Bear, Planet of Ice

Originally published in The Lamron (9/13/07)

So much about Seattle’s Minus the Bear points to a band destined for certain failure. They are an indie band that plays dance beats, names their songs bizarre head-scratchers like “Hey, Wanna Throw Up? Get Me Naked” and “Let’s Play Guitar in a Five Guitar Band,” and rips out finger-tapped guitar riffs in the vein of Eddie Van Halen. And, in fact, the band does manage to sound off-kilter at times. But gorgeous layers and clean production have propelled the talented quartet into emerging as a rock outfit teetering on the fringe of popular music relevance. With their just-released fourth LP (not including a collection of remixes released earlier this year) Planet of Ice, Minus the Bear have made another step towards mass success, momentum gained steadily since their 2005 album, Menos el Oso, but at what cost?

First of all, it is worth noting that there is no more appropriate a title for this record than Planet of Ice. The album sounds cold and digital, not quite soulless but emotionally lacking, like the feel of clean, white linoleum. This is especially true early on, and it almost kills the album’s momentum on tracks like “Knights,” which bares an extremely cheesy Linkin Park-esque computerized beat, and “Burying Luck,” which wavers between being a refreshing taste of some Menos el Oso vapor and an obvious recycling of old ideas. But as the album progresses, things actually begin to thaw, and an amazing thing happens: Minus the Bear go batcrazy out of control, flying off their rails and transforming into some progressive, cerebral jam band, sparing the aimlessness of jam and the pretension of prog.

The first red flag is “White Mystery,” which possesses one of the band’s strongest riffs. The robust harmonies also help blanket the album with some much-needed warmth. Planet of Ice ends on one of the strongest finales in recent memory; the final three tracks – “When We Escape,” “Double Vision Quest,” and the epic “Lotus,” draw out this laser-beam focus never before seen from the band, with a sort of newfound recklessness. They are quite literally jams, with beautiful guitar work and some chord progressions reminiscent of Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd.

And still, in the end, there is something a bit antiseptic about this album. It brings to mind such contemplative electronic LPs as Bright Eyes’ Digital Ash in a Digital Urn or Radiohead’s OK Computer, but lacking a bit of those albums’ three-dimensionality. It’s really hard to criticize an album where so much talent and devotion was obviously spent. The musicianship found here is jaw dropping. However, guitarist David Knudson could hammer his strings until his fingertips are worn raw, and in some cases the music would still leave its listener numb. Planet of Ice is in no way a failure. But it serves to suggest what this band is truly capable of with a little more blood and guts. As it stands, Planet of Ice sounds more like it was built instead of born.

Not that Minus the Bear ever wanted to sound organic. Never shy of computer-assistance in the mixing room, the band may be the first legitimate musical representation of the digital age: cold, hard, deliberate, and a little sad. Bands like Radiohead have created albums that dissect a computerized world, but it was always from the outside looking in. Minus the Bear’s music isn’t an observation of this change, it’s a result of it. These results can be ambivalent, steely, distant, and even sometimes hollow. But amongst all this, in most cases, they are also beautiful.