Since its 2001 debut EP This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic and 2002 debut CD Highly Refined Pirates, Minus The Bear has become known not only as an electrifying experimental indie rock/post-punk band but as one of Seattle’s best kept secrets. [That may be changing however, with appearances and exposure on MTV2, SPIN.com and late night TV this year.] This still largely underground phenomenon continued to grow its fan base with subsequent releases, including 2005’s Menos El Oso disc. On its third album, 2007’s Planet Of Ice, MTB continued to thrive as a creative force, but also recorded something somewhat conventional, yet rarely heard in the band’s catalogue, an acoustic guitar-propelled track called “Part 2.” Perhaps this was a sign of things to come.
This past summer, the band performed a few songs acoustically for the Daytrotter website. Perhaps inspired by the performance, Minus The Bear has now begun selling a brand new EP entitled Acoustics (Tigre Blanco Records) online through Amazon.com, iTunes, and Emusic as of October 7 and at its shows as of October 8.
The first of the seven tracks on this first-ever, all-acoustic release by MTB is a brand new tune called “Guns & Ammo.” And it’s a mixed bag. Hearing relatively quiet drumming (i.e. rim shots) and low-level, effect pedal-less keyboard/synthesizer work is a different experience for the average Minus The Bear fan, but is worth getting used to on this release. And on this track, though the first couple of minutes aren’t all that catchy, just wait ‘til its halfway point when the low-harmonized vocals come in (hear: “‘round and ‘round” part). From there, everything from the progressive double guitar melodies to the steadily moving bass lines (courtesy of Cory Murchy) and increasingly active drum parts keeps your ears perked up until the song fades out at the four-minute mark. Thus, it’s a good but not great start.
Four other tracks on the EP are reworked versions of songs from Planet Of Ice, Minus The Bear’s most recent studio album, while there is one track each from its first two albums, the aforementioned Highly Refined Pirates CD and Menos El Oso. I’ll get to those two later.
“Burying Luck,” formerly the whammy/octave-pedal-propelled opener on Planet, gets stripped of lead guitarist Dave Knudson’s inventive guitar effects, but none of its emotion. True, singer/guitarist Jake Snider sings instead of yelling the lyric: “What have you done.” Instead, Snider sings about his personal anger in a high-pitched tenor, in-tune and to the highest range he possibly can. On the music side of things, fancy electronic effects found on the album version are replaced by rare and prominent piano-playing by keyboardist Alex Rose. Tight start-stop rhythms and dual descending guitar runs from opposite ends of the fretboard also characterize the type of effort MTB puts into its melodies.
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