4 out of 5

Label: Suicide Squeeze

Produced by: Steve Fisk

Minus the Bear’s debut album is not their best album, but, for me, it’s the most memorable.  It’s the disc that graduated past the ‘featuring members of…’ sticker that adorned their prior EP, cementing a sound and coming across as a fully formed band.  It’s the disc that had songs that instantly burned into my head without purposeful relistens.

It also made it clear that the shallow, from-money, party boy lyrics of the EP weren’t tongue in cheek, and that we’d have to suffer through insufferable recitations on relationships and eye-rolling metaphors if we wanted to sing along.  Pointless electronic interludes were also still a thing, so you could glance around at the ex-hardcore kids at a concert and see Postal Service fans mixed in there.

Minus the Bear is dumb.  Highly Refined Pirates is dumb.  But you’ve still never heard finger tapping and such rapid-fire drumming applied in a pop sensibility, and such a damned catchy one at that.  With producer Matt Bayles’ skills at balancing and polishing these guitars and keys, HRP superceded its goddamned dumbness with a spate of entrancing tracks, with well-earned choruses and breakdowns and an undeniable vibe of summer nights.  Yeah, its represented cheesily, but the emotions are nonetheless recognizable: that mixture of fun and carelessness and worry and tension of meeting up and maybe making out and, like, buying yachts, I guess.  And probably not making out.  Or meeting up.  But I know these people exist, amd they turn put to be really talented at writing songs.

More maturity and patience would make for some more solid MTN albums after this, but the exuberance of HRP – that feeling of a group realizing they’ve come into their own – strikes me each time I spin this disc, which, tellingly, is relatively often.