Artist: The Bear Quartet
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Apparently "Oeuvreblogs" are the new black? I may not quite have the fervor to post about every single Bear Quartet song ever recorded, but I suppose that my weekly posts qualify in some way. Going strong since January! Take that Perpetua! Carrying on...
Despite being one of Bear Quartet's most different/difficult records, I loved "Saturday night" from the very first moment I heard it. It sounds like nothing else except The Bear Quartet, equal parts irritating and astonishing, often at the same time. Despite being a studio creation, a few of tracks such as "Your name here" aren't too hard to imagine in a live setting. A steady guitar melody, a recurring keyboard riff. Little bits of noise come and go, but the basics remain throughout. Aside from the explosive refrain of the title, little of the lyrics are discernible. There's echoes of "Disappearing act"/"I don't wanna" in the reference to being curled up in a car and the importance of places, and like those two, it's a troubled love song. "I would fake intimacy but no one was allowed near me / you come clear / I can feel myself rise into something like life / weightless / untroubled / forgiving even myself" Redemption through devotion? That's true love.
The Bear Quartet - Your name here
"Disappearing act" would have made a worthy, although unnecessary, addition to "Angry brigade". I guess it was a bit of an older track, so tacking it on as a b-side to the "All your life" EP makes sense from the band's perspective. I may not find it to be much of a stylistic departure, but it's not as if The Bear Quartet cares. They're gonna do what they're gonna do, regardless.
The subject? The older, wiser, tougher kid. The one who escapes. I assume this refers to breaking free of smalltown Luleå. Anywhere but here, right? A companion piece to "I don't wanna". The songs of Broder Daniel may perfectly capture the blunt trauma of teen angst, but BQ reaches an entirely different level of despair, something far more deep and poetic. While vague generalities stir up empathy, an isolated incident leaves a lump in my throat.
The Bear Quartet - Disappearing act
It's been awhile since I've had an "Old friends" moment. It certainly helps that I've relocated myself far away from the Bay Area where I spent my oh-so formative teen years. Despite being the state capitol of Washington, Olympia is very much a small town so the chances of me running into old mates are minimal at best. Especially the ones who drifted in the direction I didn't want to go. I heard the inevitable bad news about one of those old friends this week, secondhand. It's a relief in a way; a conclusion that I think a lot of people were resigned to. Not that it makes it easier, better or anything else for that matter. I'm sorry that I let you become so scary to me. I wish I could've been a better friend.
The Bear Quartet - Old friends
Matt Giordano is taking care of this week's BQ post:
It's Saturday and you know what that means! This time around I decided to choose The Bear Quartet song that I've been listening to the most lately: "An epidemic touch." It's a fairly recent one, from 2005's "I have an itch EP" and somehow I find this track to be more of the bridge into their foray of electronic music, yet this holds much more of the organic elements of the albums' released previously into the mix. It's a bit of a rocker too, with Mattias Alkberg's barely audible vocals and Calle Olsson's stellar keyboard lines, this may truly be one of their most overlooked tracks.
The Bear Quartet - An epidemic touch
This week's It's A Trap! Last.fm listening group top 10 albums of the week:
01. The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
02. The Radio Dept. – Pet Grief
03. Bright Eyes – Cassadaga
04. José González – Veneer
05. The Bear Quartet – Ny våg
06. Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
07. Dinosaur Jr. – Beyond
08. The Shins – Wincing The Night Away
09. The Knife – Silent Shout
10. Shout Out Louds – Howl Howl Gaff Gaff
Do you listen to music on your computer or with an iPod? Join us! Go here to learn more: http://www.last.fm/help/
This week Jonas Appelqvist gets the Bear Quartet post:
"Ny våg" was released in 2002 and it's a dark and introvert album consisting of just nine songs. Only three of them have actual singing lyrics attached (yeah alright, actually it is four songs, but "Trust island" only consists of Matti repeating "Luleå, Kil och Helsingborg", the three cities from where the members of BQ descend) and the rest of the record is more or less instrumental stuff with the kind of twists that are so typical for this band. Ironically enough, I have decided to highlight the opening track, "Euthanasia" that is in no way instrumental and does not have one single trace of Alexandra Dahlström reading a poem over it to destroy it. Fact is, it's just a solid rock song. ´Take two riffs, one for the verses and one for the refrains. Add drums driven almost beyond recognition and haunted lyrics ("Drugs anyone/for the pain for the fun/so I'm a monster really/well guess who spawned me/it was you and you and you and you and you") and there you have it. 1:29. Perfection.
The Bear Quartet - Euthanasia
Want to share your own thoughts on The Bear Quartet for our weekly tribute series? I'd love to hear it. Get in touch to work it out.
Last night's Sirius Blog Radio playlist:
01. Superfamily - The radio has expressed concerns about what you did last night
02. TALK 1
03. Asha Ali - These months
04. Boys of Scandinavia - Why do you love me? (radio edit)
05. Promoe - Headache
06. TALK 2
07. Closer - Sensing the wake
08. The Bear Quartet - Mom and dad
09. TALK 3
10. Kristofer Åström - Just a little insane
11. Familjen - Kom säger dom
12. Pavan - The bird
13. TALK 4
14. Kazakstan - Song to the past
15. Universal Poplab - Vampire in you
16. TALK 5
17. Scraps of Tape - Death as it should be
18. ARM - Drving by accident
19. The Idealist - The knives are my eyes
20. TALK 6
21. Tsukimono - Gathering heavy breathing
22. Pimentola - Wish upon a fallen star
23. Plain Fade - Uliaan leski
24. TALK 7
25. The Skull Defekts - Six six for eyes
26. Logh - Into the night
27. TALK 8
28. Aerial - You will all die, all things will
29. Tobias Hellkvist - Moment at ven
30. Audrey - Views
31. TALK 9
32. Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words - Ashen like the sky
Parasol's Jim Kelly once again graces us with a song for our weekly Bear Quartet post:
Released in 2000, The Bear Quartet's "My war" was all about the austere, the sepia-toned, an album that really flirted with bleakness, especially the very very mellow quatrain of passionate acoustic ballads at the album's core. With "My war" the band further unveiled its inner-Neil Young, continued to explore its inner-Morrissey, while purposefully outing its inner-Radiohead. 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"). Although hidden at the tail end of the album, it was the second single, and one of The Bear Quartet's most gorgeous songs to date. A living breathing beautiful piano driven charmer, among their very lushest, with lyrics about getting away from it all, or wishing you could...
The Bear Quartet - I don't wanna
"Helpless", a song that sounds exactly like it should. It's a sublime piece of frail, fragile beauty. The subject matter is depressing, but I like to think that the melody of the refrain offers a sense of hope for an otherwise untenable situation.
The Bear Quartet - Helpless
The Bear Quartet released their very first album "Penny century" way, way back in 1992. In reality, that's not really all that long ago, it's just that the band has evolved quite a bit in the interim 15 years. They also released 13 albums since then and even more EPs. So yeah, it's been quite a journey to say the least. You might've noticed that we've mostly been posting only newer BQ tracks so far in this weekly experiment thing we've got going and I'm not going to lie - I'm really not that fond of their early material. Or I guess I should say, it's not that I don't like it (I do), it's just that the band has gotten so so so much better over the years. Very few acts can say that, especially with such a vast discography behind them. After all, that's a big part of what makes The Bear Quartet so special. I also have no nostalgic attachment to the band's early work, having discovered them around the time of "Gay icon" (2001). So what am I getting at? Well, it's time we looked back at that first record and took a listen. Unsurprisingly, early BQ sounds a lot like other indierock of the era: Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and so on and so forth. Very contemporary for the early 90s, especially for a band from BFE (aka Luleå). Is it good? Yeah, I'd say so. It's very good for what it is and I know I'd rather listen to BQ than Pavement any day.
The Bear Quartet - Hrrn hrrn
The Bear Quartet - It only takes a flashlight to create a monster
If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to choose my one, and only one, absolute favorite Bear Quartet record, today I'd say it was "Angry brigade". It's not the most "Important" BQ album (with a capital I), but it is tremendously consistent the whole way through and the one record I find myself grabbing most often when I need my BQ fix. Opening track "Put me back together" for example is fantastic in that it has no chorus, just an endless recurring melody that builds and builds as the lyrics heap insult upon injury, compiling an endless pile of grief. My favorite line: "We were sure it wasn't loaded." Even without context, you can easily imagine all sorts of terrible scenarios which would result in such a, uh, punchline. "I was only seven and I got knifed" is also pretty good, even if just for being silly (and hey, that's Northern Sweden for you). So is "I tried to fix the TV" too, as again - it's easy to picture how that could go oh-so wrong. In the end, "The last I felt was rain." Ominous.
The Bear Quartet - Put me back together
This week's Bear Quartet post comes courtesy of Johan Gustavsson. Johan plays in a shit-ton of various bands including Scraps of Tape, Tsukimono, Alina and Conduo Orchestra to name a few. SoT just released the excellent album "This is a copy is this a copy" and is on tour as we speak. Alina and Tsukimono have new records on the way, as do a few of the other projects he's involved in. Needless to say, he's a busy guy, but somehow to found time to reminisce on the mighty BQ:
"Gay icon" was the first BQ album I ever listened to as a whole and by my own will.
Up until then, my brother David used to play BQ to me once in a while, proclaiming that they were/are the best Swedish band ever and so on... I have infinite trust in David's musical knowledge and taste, so after a while I bought "Gay icon" and when "Portrait painter" came on I was blown to pieces. The lyrics just make me shudder and wipe a tear every time... thank you.
"Gay icon" was my first Bear Quartet album, too. Download "Portrait painter" below.
The Bear Quartet - Portrait painter
Once again, Aymeric of Absolut Noise takes care of our weekly Bear Quartet post:
Preamble: "Earthly pastime" is certainly not the best Bear Quartet song; too square, too pop, too "regular". Released on their "Moby Dick" album, it was made during the early part of BQ story. It could actually be taken as a "country" song. In this respect, it reminds me a bit the sound of "Ditt hjärta är en stjärna", the latest Mattias Alkberg BD album.
There are three kind of songs: the ones you hate, the ones you love and the ones you'd better listen to while you are driving a car. "Earthly pastime" belongs to this third category. I cannot exactly remember when I have begun to fall in love with it. I used to listen to it at home and find it nice, but it was not a killer to me. And then I was driving near Monaco, just next to the French Riviera, exactly on the road where Grace Kelly died in a car crash. I was actually thinking about the Hitchcock actress when I started to realize that I was moving my head back and forth, driving a bit too fast on this serpentine road. The feeling was just too good. I wanted to let the car go, put my hands off the steering wheel and clap them in rhythm. I did not dare though. I am still alive.
The Bear Quartet - Earthly pastime