With so many guitar-driven bands coming and going since the advent of the 2000s indie rock explosion, it’s easy to dismiss and forget certain records that made a splash upon their arrival before fading out of view. Minus The Bear, a band known for their intricate math-rock riffing and (sometimes) maddening middle-of-road consistency nevertheless created one of the best examples of just the kind of sprightly, inventive, cathartic (yet tonally deadpan) indie art-emo that seems to be sorely missing in today’s musical climate. Menos El Oso, their 2005 sophomore outing is the kind of record that has a little bit of everything-- rendering the term “indie rock” profusely inadequate because it doesn't even hint at the melodic excitement and technical know-how Minus The Bear display here.
Menos El Oso is the sound of a band committing to their vision and forcing it to blossom on all accounts. Firing on all cylinders, and besting their already impressive debut, it is an album that sounds deceptively fluid and smooth if you’re not paying close attention. Something Minus The Bear do so ridiculously well— they seem to have an endless supply of groovy bass and guitar riffing that, more often than not, can combine into a sublime expression of pure musical exuberance. A perfect example is on the album highlight “Drilling”, where an insistent forward-thinking guitar riff drives the song into an all-hands-on-deck treatise on how to blow away an audience and keep them both engaged and on fire for over 5 minutes. It’s not quite aggressive— there’s nobody on earth who could call vocalist Jake Snyder anything but soulful— but it has an edge that pushes it just a bit further than calm & collected. It’s got hunger. Elsewhere, on mid-album sunshine stunner “Pachuca Sunrise”, Minus is able to completely (and accurately) capture a picture of beachside melancholy. I mean it, listen to the song and you can almost feel the breezy seaside air blowing past your face as you connect with the lyrical yearning to share the scene with a faraway lover. Between these two extremes, the band balances the rest of the record, unafraid to tempter driving riffage with serene soundscapes and equally fearless when bolstering the production with slight electronic bedding. For proof they can pull the elctro-pop skitter off just fine, look no further than “El Torrente”— a grower that’ll be stuck in your head for hours after the album stops spinning.
Minus The Bear, overall, has been a frustrating band since releasing Menos El Oso. No, they haven’t released an outright TERRIBLE record (regardless of what some fans will tell you about 4th outing OMNI, it’s actually pretty good), but their albums tend to vacillate between captivating/interesting and boring/middling to a degree that would make any fan slightly indifferent. Whenever I stop to go back and re-listen, though, I’m always surprised at what I find— songs I’d forgotten about, songs I didn’t initially like but somehow capture me on repeated spins, overall album arcs that remind me of why I should care in the first place— Minus The Bear may not be critical darlings but they can out-riff a million of the newcomers that have sprung up in their wake. If you’re looking for a reason to fall in love with guitar-rock again, or just need a healthy dose of inventive indie swashbuckling set to dirty grooves, you can’t possibly go wrong with Menos El Oso.
Beach towel not included, BYOB.
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