The
Bear Quartet - My War
 Artist: The
Bear Quartet
Title: My War
Catalog#: WeCD168
Price: $13.25
|
Tracks
on this CD: |
| What
I Hate |
| Old
Friends |
| Helpless |
| Everybody
Gets To Play |
| Needs
Vs. Facts |
| Walking
Out |
| Eastbound |
| I
Had a Job |
| I
Don't Wanna |
| I
Can Wait |
| |
‘My
War’ is where The Bear Quartet unveils its inner-Neil Young,
further explores its inner-Morrissey, while purposefully outing
its inner-Radiohead. Like “The Needle And The Damage Done” meets “There
Is A Light And It Never Goes Out” meets “Packt Like
Sardines In A Crushed Tin Box”, all in the space of one
dark, sensual album. This is The Bear Quartet’s most intensely
introspective and melancholy album, with the exception of the
opening track, the experimental epic “What I Hate”,
a blistering electro-pop tantrum that explores levels of distortion
and frequency modulation usually reserved for U.S. Military Psy-Ops
campaigns. Otherwise ‘My War’ is all about the austere,
the sepia-toned…flirting with bleakness, especially the
very mellow quatrain of passionate acoustic ballads at the album’s
core. The album finds the band at their most willfully perverse
("What I Hate"), at their most celestial ("I'm
Walking Out"), and their most brilliantly realized (“I
Don’t Wanna”). The album's second single, and one
of The Bear Quartet’s most gorgeous songs to date, "I
Don't Wanna" is a living breathing beautiful song, among
their very lushest; while the other single taken from the album, “Old
Friends”, is the embodiment of the eeriest early Neil Young.
As
a certified freak, I’m happy to report that once
you’re hooked you are richly rewarded with a new album
or new EP every few months! C’mon, the band has released
13 albums and 16 EPs over the last decade…you do the
math! And although the individual songs are at turns gorgeous
and inspiring and challenging, it’s is the enormous body
of work that The Bear Quartet has created and continues to
create that makes them one of the greatest bands in existence
today. And ‘My War’ proves it, yet again.
All
Music Guide: “For 2000's My War, the Bear Quartet
drop the quasi-symphonic textures of their last few albums
in favor of a less "pretty" but ultimately more intriguing
sound. The eight-minute opener, "What I Hate," starts
with a sparse, Kraftwerk-like arrangement of minimal keyboards
and tapping electronic drums under a heavily processed lead
vocal before erupting into an incredibly harsh barrage of high-register
bleeping and droning noises that steamroller over the rest
of the song and continue unabated for close to five minutes.
It's actually by far the coolest song on the entire album,
as the other nine songs don't go quite as far into the experimental
zone. Acoustic guitars predominate, with feedback and subtle
electronic accents coloring the uniformly slowly expanding,
meandering songs. The sound suggests that this is a dark, melancholy
album, but there's actually a fair amount of humor to be found
on tracks like "Everybody Gets to Play," a heartfelt
and earnest tribute to the joys of pick-up basketball games,
and the wry "I Had a Job." The lovely "Helpless" is
another highlight, one of the prettiest ballads of the Bear
Quartet's career. Eight albums into their career, the Bear
Quartet is unafraid to change their sound, and My War is one
of their stronger albums."
View
more Bear Quartet releases...
|
