Bearhug
Bill, Dance, Shiner
9 Track, LP (2012, Spunk)
Related: Bearhug.
There’s nothing but a jangling Strat that opens Bearhug’s debut record Bill, Dance, Shiner. Resting reverbed and alone for barely a bar, the all-in Bearhug ethos quickly makes its cacophonous entry; a full mix of sugar-rush snares and overdriven guitars. By the time Ryan Phelan’s murmured vocal has hummed through the occasional breakdown of fuzz, you realise that not only do Bearhug have an infectious sound, but that they suffer from the familial adoration typical of a younger cousin.
The big cousin they’re pestering at the family barbeque is Toronto’s Broken Social Scene - the sprawling collaborative affair that has stood at the centre of Canada’s lauded indie scene for more than 10 years. Half the sights, sounds and adventurousness of Bearhug seem to come from the same place. Phelan’s voice is as much his natural leaning as it is a subconscious shirt-tug at Kevin Drew, while the trumpet arrangements through the middle of the lolling ‘Cherry Red’ come straight from the imagination of Brendan Canning. But Broken Social Scene aren’t the only notable influence here. The intro to the blistering aside ‘Home’ begins with a distorted clutter pasted straight from the opening bar of Pavement’s ‘Silence Kit’ while ‘Cinema West’ screams of My Morning Jacket excess painted with a brush of torpor.
There will rarely be a time where you will hear a band sound so much like their self-proclaimed heroes, but if you can put aside that all-too-blatant homage (or are just unfamiliar with the aforementioned discographies) then you’ll find a uniquely beautiful record in Bill, Dance, Shiner; one overflowing with optimism and earnest positivity.
That optimism shines through on ‘Be Fine,’ featuring another lonely, West Coast derived guitar line; the swoon of ‘Shiner’; ‘When I Shake’s’ collage of melodies; and the record’s lead single, ‘Angeline’, which was reportedly devised as a two-part tale of romantic escapism from the book of Springsteen. These upbeat moments may be Bearhug’s most memorable, but it’s the lazy romance of tracks such as album closer ‘Cold Stream’ and the punch-drunk stupor of ‘Cherry Red’ that demonstrate the full breadth of the band. Initially drawn out lessons in lethargy, both tracks go through either an abrupt dynamic shift or a collapse into noise; arrangements that reach beyond familiar sounds to argue the case for their own creativity.
Bill, Dance, Shiner is a pleasant listen; undeniably infectious whatever the inspiration. However, it’s also a sign of the times. In a world where Gotye can unashamedly channel Peter Gabriel and Deep Sea Arcade can take blatant stabs at Brit-Pop, Bearhug can come across as just another buoy in a sea of bands resting comfortably on their influences. It sits in a strange place - a stolen collage born from the generational crotch of artful counterfeiting, but a collage that is inherently beautiful nonetheless.
by Max Easton
– Sydney five-piece Bearhug are prepping a stopgap EP to follow up las…
– A fixie of hipsters (with names like Matt, Leroy, Eugene and Simon) …
What: Bill, Dance, Shiner by Bearhug.
When: March 23 through Spun…
An all-killer, no-filler edition of New Noise featuring tracks by Wolf…
Melbourne’s Seagull and Sydney’s Bearhug will join forces for a pair o…
so many bearbands.
playing a gig in a living room in Sydney on April 14!
nice coup! can see these guys filling venues significantly larger than a living room by the end of this album cycle..
i feel like it's a concerning that a review can call an album blatantly unoriginal and it still be largely positive.
That's the exact kind of debate I hoped would find its way to the comments section! Moar!
for me its more concering that unoriginality is only raised i *some *reviews
i don't think it sounds like bss. i love it
i quite like it, and yeah the BSS thing doesn't ring true for me
and the pavement thing.
and no one in that band owns a strat.
next Friday at the Workers
looking forward to checking them out
Nothing of theirs has even come close to the demo/ EP 'Cartoon Islands', I reckon. Haven't heard much of this album, though
Me too. It's frustrating to see albums by bands like Tame Impala, Pond, Deep Sea Arcade and now Bearhug all accepted both critically and commercially considering their lack of originality. I don't think it's worth shunning a record for that reason without addressing the album's merits alongside it either though.
As far as my knowledge of musical history goes, there's never been a time where bands ripping off other bands' sounds has been so acceptable (Led Zeppelin, etc sure, but few people were aware of that at the time, this generation of bands has an audience that's quite aware of where those sounds come from.) I don't know why so many bands feel its okay to imitate rather than strive for something fresh. It's a very weird thing going on.
I think freshness is the most difficult thing to achieve in music. Nothing reviewed or lauded on this website can be classified as fresh. Any discussion about it is pretty arbitrary
Totally agreed, pursuing it is almost futile really...but you don't think it's worth striving for?
Sure it's worth striving for... But it's close to impossible to achieve. Even if you have clear intentions. I don't think tame impala wanted to sound like cream but they do. It doesn't make their songs better or worse.. It's just a vehicle to express their ideas
The gushing praise overwhelms any concerns the review might have about originality.
Shouldn't the question be that if so many of the parts are borrowed, what does that do to the emotional content? How do they honestly derive ''optimism and earnest positivity'' from ''all-too-blatant homage''?
Bonus question: can the same record be ''uniquely beautiful'' and ''inherently beautiful''.
Was it gushing? I didn't really read it as such...it was labelled stolen and counterfeited...a counterfeited painting doesn't become ugly, nor would it be unworthy of looking at. There's a sense of dichotomy there, sure, but I'd hope it came across as balanced.
Optimism and positivity aren't traits exclusive to an original work. You can be earnest without being honest. The band mean well, and deliver with conviction using aspects taken from bands that precede them.
Fair call on lazy descriptors. The terms don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive though.
wow!
don't mind the song actually
You could be right on some of that, ghoti-max (I assume by the detailed reply that you wrote the piece), but what I was getting at is that that kind of examination belongs in the review, not the comments section. Dig in deeper.
Are you going for the content coordinator job, mathieson?
Got knocked back for not having the photoshop skills to create Fairfax-style online collages, Goalie.
unoriginality and referentiality are very different things, i might add
Surely lack of originality doesn't mean that it isn't any good.
The Dead Leaves album sounds exactly like The National, but I still enjoy listening to it.
it does make it artistically pointless, unless there's some way for it to be contextualised. Why listen to someone's respectably accurate tribute brand?
ugh, *band. brand's kind of appropriate though