Minus The Bear

Menos El Oso

[5] While it’s convenient to think of Minus The Bear as “that weird little dance-punk band with the finger-tapping guitar player and the absurd song titles,” that description has also become a curse for the Seattle quintet, who’ve quietly been evolving in spite of the very image listeners have built for them. Which isn’t to say fans of Minus The Bear’s previous stuff won’t immediately recognize Menos El Oso: The comfy old signatures-clipped guitar figures, clever synthesizer accents, 4/4 grooves and laid-back vocals-abound throughout the band’s second album. However, this time around, the song titles have been stripped down to abstractions; the overall mood has taken a turn for the serious; and the lyrics, generally speaking, have grown outside of girls and bars to tackle the bigger picture of what lies beyond the two. Think of it as an accidental concept album: Outside of a lone song about a child’s murder (“El Torrente”) and the back-to-back mellower tracks (“The Pig War” and “This Ain’t A Surfin’ Movie”) that close the album, there’s a constant sense of forward motion to Menos El Oso that suits the whole metaphor of growing up and growing out. (SUICIDE SQUEEZE) Aaron Burgess



ROCKS LIKE: Minus The Bear's Highly Refined Pirates • Minus The Bear’s They Make Beer Commercials Like This EP • Minus The Bear’s This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic EP