Tag: bq
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.
MP3:
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.
MP3:
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.
MP3:
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.
MP3:
The Bear Quartet - An epidemic touch
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.
MP3:
The Bear Quartet - Euthanasia
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...
MP3:
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.
MP3:
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.
MP3:
The Bear Quartet - Hrrn hrrn
MP3:
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.
MP3:
The Bear Quartet - Put me back together
harold | Mon, Feb 6th, 2012 22:42:51