Minus the Bear will close the book on their nearly two decades as a band with a farewell tour this fall. Since their first shows in 2001, the Seattle group have been thrilling crowds with their virtuosic songwriting and play from Los Angeles, New York, London and Tokyo, to Jimmy Kimmel Live and Bonnaroo. Their melding of genres and innovative use of pedals, loops, and electronic elements in their music has been a defining contribution to indie rock in the mp3 and streaming era, and an influence on the band’s peers and those that followed in their wake. In tandem with one last tour of North America, Minus the Bear will release the Fair Enough EP. The new single “Fair Enough” can be streamed on Stereogum alongside an in depth interview with the band reflecting on their career. Fans can pre-order the EP now via the SSQ Official Store (LINK) and The Farewell Tour VIP pre-sale (VIP tickets include meet & greet and exclusive VIP items) will launch tomorrow, Wednesday, July 18th at 10 am ET via vip.MinustheBear.com. All tour dates listed below.
A Statement from Minus the Bear
Friends,
After almost two decades of writing and touring the world together, we have decided to close this chapter of our lives as Minus the Bear.
What started as a silly inside joke inside the dingy confines of Seattle’s original Cha Cha Lounge back in 2001 quickly snowballed into years of adventures, creativity, and friendship. We could have never predicted the wild journey about to begin. We’ve accomplished so much over the past 17 years, and we are grateful for the experience.
Undoubtedly we owe all of these adventures to you, our fans. Without all of you, the memories of traveling the world, exploring different cultures, and witnessing the delight of your beautiful faces singing along wouldn’t have been possible. Your support weathered us through storms that easily could have scuttled the band. Throughout the years, it’s you who kept us going. We cannot thank you enough.
This Autumn we head out on our final tour in support of our upcoming 4-song EP “Fair Enough” courtesy of Suicide Squeeze Records.
These final shows are a celebration for the community of fans who gave us so much through years of dedication. We’ll be digging deep in the MTB catalogue and we are honored for the opportunity to play our hearts out for you one last time.
Love,
Alex, Cory, Dave & Jake
***
Minus the Bear is a product of the first two tumultuous decades of this century. From their first show in 2001 to their impending dissolution at the end of 2018, the Seattle band thrived on the musical awakening in the era of the mp3, the internet, poptimism, and the endless cross-pollinations generated from an expanded consciousness of new forms of music. With the aim of sounding like “classic rock from the future,” they initially forged their music from the dichotomous blend of David Knudson’s prodigious finger-tapped guitar lines and Jake Snider’s cool-tempered narratives set against a backdrop of souped-up dance beats. Throughout their career, spanning six full-length albums and a raft of EPs, singles and split 7”s, they’ve carried on the trailblazing traditions of ‘70s prog rockers and guitar-centric indie rock pioneers of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but they’ve also always been a band of new sounds. Synths, drum machine break beats, omnichords, and pedalboard gadgetry all contribute to the band’s electronic flourishes. You can hear the poptimist appreciation for a club banger, a new wave hook, or a solid hip-hop beat in any number of their songs. And with their final EP, Fair Enough, Minus the Bear closes the book on their inimitable hybrid of scholarly art-rock, breezy indie pop, and warehouse party appeal.
One of the first tracks written for their last album VOIDS was “Fair Enough”, a reserved track that went through a variety of permutations before winding up on the backburner. Like most Minus the Bear songs, it began as a loose framework of interlocking guitar parts created by Knudson that quickly changed shape as the other members contributed their parts. “It’s interesting because we tried re-doing it twice in the studio,” says keyboardist/vocalist Alex Rose. “I was really into the first new direction as it was very pop, but collectively it didn’t seem to fit. Then we tried a more ambient one… it just ended up being one of those songs that didn’t beat the others.” But as the band was digging through their archives earlier this year, they stumbled upon an early version of the song. “It jumped out as sounding done,” Rose recalls. “I touched up the mix, fixed a few edits and sent it to everyone while we were on the recent Planet of Ice anniversary tour. The other guys all listened together and by all accounts had ‘a moment.’ I think the song had taken on new meaning after we decided to end the band.” Given Snider’s prescient lyrical lament of lost passions and finding “the exact moment we turned it off,” it’s hardly surprising to hear that the song resonates strongly within the group. Snider insists it was written to eulogize a failed romantic relationship, but it’s hard to not hear the lyrics as foreshadowing the band’s break-up.
The other three songs of Fair Enough are both a continuation and a culmination of Minus the Bear’s diverse sounds. The adrenalized up-tempo drumbeats, lush electronics, and nimble guitar work that initially set them apart from their peers back in 2001 are on full display during “Viaduct”. It certainly sounds like the same band that wrote “Monkey!!!Knife!!!Fight!!!”, but with a whole new arsenal of tricks, techniques, and toys to embellish the sound. “Dinosaur” has the punctuated groove of early hits of “Fine + 2 PTS ”, but crafted with the understated Steely Dan-esque delivery of their more current slow jams. In keeping with their “classic rock from the future” approach, the opening keyboard line of “Dinosaur” is a ham-fisted hook originally conceived on a cheap iPhone piano app. The EP closes with a nod to their ongoing remix collaborations, this time with a vibrant rave-up reinvention of “Invisible” by Sombear.
The EP album art comes courtesy of bassist Cory Murchy. “The picture on our first EP—This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic—was a blurry photo of the band walking through the forest,” Murchy explains. “The cover to Fair Enough is a nod to that almost 20 years on. The figures are much more defined, coming into their own colors, a little less unified but still working within each other’s orbit. The wonder of the woods has been replaced with a milled piece of working lumber as the canvas. I think it reflects the music in a lot of the same ways—distilled by time and purpose.”
Minus the Bear are a band born in the new millennium, when the gateways to cult artists were blown open by the internet, rock’s purist aesthetic rules were challenged, and technological advancements completely altered the way we create and consume music. If there was some middle ground to be found between King Crimson’s fretboard gymnastics, Midwest indie rock’s cerebral songcraft, Warp Records’ glitchy compositions, and FM radio’s current bump-and-grind staples, Minus the Bear staked it out first.
Suicide Squeeze is proud to release Fair Enough on October 19, 2018. Fair Enough will be available on CD, digital formats, and as a 12” cut at 45rpm. The initial vinyl run consists of 2000 copies on coke bottle green and 1000 copies on black.
