May 21, 2012

These days, the lifespan of your typical punk band is dictated by everything from the amount of commitment to the level of entitlement its members possess. In sharp contrast to most of the here-today-gone-later-this-afternoon opportunists out there, the members of Polar Bear Club couldn’t care less about major-label record deals, getting songs placed in car commercials or meeting anybody from the Kardashian family. Their goal is to play a straight-ahead, stripped-down style of post-hardcore that wields just as much passion as it does power. The PBC story began in 2005 in upstate New York, when vocalist Jimmy Stadt, guitarists Chris Browne and Kevin Mahoney (later replaced by Nate Morris), bassist Josh Dillon (replaced by Greg Odom) and drummer Bob O’Neil (replaced by Emmett Menke) had their 2006 EP, The Redder The Better, issued as a joint venture by indie labels Luchador Records and Triple Attack Records. The scrappy EP—equally influenced by iconic jersey punks Lifetime and Clear Channel darlings Third Eye Blind—made waves in the underground punk scene, landing the band on many an internet-based best-of-year list. PBC’s debut album, Some Things Just Disappear, issued in 2008 by Red Leader Records, sonically positioned itself into a common space of a Venn Diagram of Gainesville, Florida’s beardcore scene overlapping with an earnestness that’s closer to Social Distortion’s Mike Ness and X’s John Doe. Later that year, Odom was replaced by Erik Henning, and after extensive touring in support of Disappear, the band members felt they needed to do something more with their lives and put the underground rock life behind them. But unlike the legion of dudes bearing guitars who come together solely for the lure of girls and free drinks, Polar Bear Club had amassed a small but ardent fanbase practically demanding they continue. Some of the band’s biggest supporters were located at the contemporary hardcore label Bridge Nine, who signed the band in early 2009, issuing their powerful second album, Chasing Hamburg in September of that year. Since the record’s release, PBC have thrilled audiences from the dive bars of Europe to the 2010 Vans Warped Tour and AP Tour Fall—and they couldn’t be loving it more. “People are going to think [about your band] what they’re going to think,” Stadt told AP in 2010. “The second you start trying to figure out what that is or recapture that, you’re backtracking. I never started doing this to capture what anyone thinks or to please anyone. I do this for myself because I love it, first and foremost. I’m confident in what Polar Bear Club do and I have a clear idea of what I want that to be. I’m in this for the long haul, or as long as that haul can be.”