Staff Reviews

Minus The Bear - VOIDS

Review by Ruth Singleton

It has a hopeful beauty»

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On their sixth album Voids, Minus the Bear started with a blank slate, and inadvertently found
themselves applying the same starting-from-scratch strategies that fueled their initial creative
process. Album opener Last Kiss immediately establishes the band’s renewed fervor. An
appropriately dizzying guitar line plunges into a propulsive groove before the chorus unfolds into
a multi-tiered pop chorus. From there the album flows into Give and Take, a tightly wound
exercise in syncopation that recalls the celebratory pulse of early Bear classics like Fine + 2 Pts
while exploring new textures and timbres. Invisible is arguably the catchiest song of the band’s
career, with Jake Snider’s vocal melodies and Knudson’s imaginative guitar work battling for the
strongest hooks. What About the Boat? reminds us of the math-rock tag that followed the
band in their early years, with understated instrumentation disguising an odd-time beat. Erase,
recalls the merging of forlorn indie pop and electronica that the band dabbled with on their early
EPs, but demonstrates the Bear’s ongoing melodic sophistication and tonal exploration. By the
time the band reaches album closer Lighthouse, they’ve traversed so much sonic territory that
the only appropriate tactic left at their disposal is a climactic crescendo, driven at its peak by
Cory Murchy’s thunderous bass. Not since Planet of Ice’s Lotus has the Bear achieved such an
epic finale. All in all, it’s an album that reminds us of everything that made us fall in love with
Minus the Bear in the first place, and a big part of that appeal is the sense that the band is
heading into uncharted territories.description from www.roughtrade.com