3 out of 5

Label: Suicide Squeeze

Produced by: Alex Rose (track 1, recorded / mixed by), Sam Bell (tracks 2, 3, recorded / mixed by)

Hm. Minus the Bear have the distinction of approximately tracking / spanning / indicating my era’s gutting of the music industry. I’m being somewhat hyperbolic, but my tastes were coming of age during the transition from physical media to digital, which also included a shift from there being kind of general genres of music to… everyone liking everything. That’s still hyperbolic, of course, since it’s not like genres went away, but there was something about giving the music-making (and music acquiring) tools to more of the masses that seemed to encourage a fair amount of homogenization.

I’m obviously an old, quibbling about “they don’t make it like they used to,” but I’d try to retain some credibility by maintaining that I still find plenty of music out there to enjoy or be surprised by; but when I go into a music store nowadays – of which there are notably lesser – the little cards that tell you what’s metal and what’s hip-hop and etcetera seem to matter not as much; you might as well just browse the whole store.

MtB sprang out of some hardcore groups, and started out on punky / indie imprint Suicide Squeeze. Their debut EP was, like, okay, and I’ll save most of the rest of the retread to say that their “final” EP – Fair Enough – is also okay. Along the 17 year journey from there to here, the group turned its math-touched love songs from smirky cringe into sincere cringe, keeping the finger-tapping guitar as kind of their brand and promoted what was (and still is, to me) the most fleeting element of their sound – the electronics – as part of that brand as well. So kids on the fringes of hardcore tip-toed into pop with jokey song titles and a vague sense that it was all just a lark eventually embraced the fact that they liked sappy, catchy pop tunes after all, and found support amongst near adults who were going through that same transition. This aligned with an overall streamlining of music sound and delivery, giving MtB a nice, ongoing relevance.

Anyhow.

Fair Enough does okay, distilled versions of what the band has been doing: a cringe, glossy love song (the opener); some finger-tapping time changes (Viaduct); a bit of distortion and riffage, blended with pop (Dinosaur); and then a remix, this time of a Voids track. The album name, and the kind of summary take on their styles feels very purposeful; the lyrics map to getting older. The group returned to Suicide Squeeze a while back. I want to respect the commitment to the bit in a way that acknowledges that it was way more than a bit, and that it’s pretty smart to deliver these final songs in a meta, “we know they’re average” manner, but going back to the smirk these musicians all started with, it seems better to smirk back.