Well, this is a pleasant surprise.
We’ve seen Bear In The Air live twice over the past few years, and been left resolutely uninspired both times, but this recording is a pretty enjoyable experience. ‘Put On Your Travelling Shoes’ opens with tastefully reverby keyboard tinkles that aren’t a million miles away from something on the American Beauty soundtrack. A few seconds later the band comes in with a hazy fuzzy version of 60s rock recreated in the guise of 90s indie, and a frantically catchy, breathy vocal line about “drinking wine straight from the bottle” hooks its claws deep into that odd nodule of the brain that exists solely to hang onto fragments of pop melody and random lines from ancient adverts (“Clifford is quite the bon viveur”). Whilst the medulla hauntologica is being entranced, the conscious part of our mind is coming to a conclusion: that Stefan Archer’s keyboards get flattened and distorted through small PAs, and that Kane Chamberlain’s vocals can be charmingly tuneful, even though they’re clearly too weak to cut it on a noisy stage. There are definitely some very strong elements to this band that we’d entirely missed in concert.
‘Unnatural’ reinforces the feeling that this is a studio band – no shame in that – by washing us down with a tinny High Street shoegaze sound that might not excite the purists, but again tickles the ears of anyone with an interest in well made pop music. In fact, it reminds us an awful lot of “Dreams” by The Cranberries, and it might come as a shock to anyone who’s only come across the ugly punchdrunk politicising of “Zombie” that they were a decent band on their first album. Cloyingly sugary perhaps, but these two tracks are worth a listen.
“Have A Happy Life” is slightly less successful, but it’s still built around a jaunty little melody that takes us by the hand for a quick dance down a petal-strewn path; trouble is Archer keeps trying to trip us up into a fetid pool of schmaltzy mid-80s sax along the journey. Get back on the keyboards, man! Something about the clean rock ‘n’ roll rhythms remind us of Aztec Camera just after they’d ceased to matter. It’s a decent enough song, but doesn’t really hit the heights.
There are some lovely icy little drum machine interjections on “Skywriting”, but for the most part it’s smothered beneath a thick blanket of pseudo-strings. The lyrics talk about being “underneath a landslide/ Swimming in the riptide”, but the music is so safe it’s more the sonic equivalent of sitting quietly on the little train at Blenheim Palace, with members of Keane sitting on the throttle making sure the journey doesn’t get too exciting.
We look forward to hearing the Bears’ next recording, as this one has honestly blown away our expectations. We hope that they can capitalise on the airy melodicism of the best music here, and leave the nods towards landfill indie behind. We’d like them to leave the sensibly cosy ground behind and start to sound a lot more bi-polar, but for now this is a CD we can fully support.