Seattle, Washington's greatest Minus the Bear are back with their highly anticipated album, Omni. The follow up to 2007's Planet of Ice takes an unexpected turn musically and delves into a plethora of groove based tracks that push Minus the Bear into a whole other stratosphere of indie rock,and with that they deliver the best album of the year so far.
The album starts off with a bang on "My Time", a keyboard and synth infested album that pushes the band into a whole new direction musically. Lead singer Jake Snider shines vocally with his laid back and melodic vocals taking charge of the song and allowing it to travel along at ease. My favorite song off the album is "Summer Angel", an extremely melodic and superb track that fires on all cylinders here with impressive guitar work from Jake and Dave Krudson, who work together brilliantly here along with the rest of the band. "Secret Country" is a slightly more aggressive track, with harder edged guitars and superb drum work courtesy of Erin Tate, showing off a little diversity and mixing up the flavor a bit on the album.
As we enter the album's second half, we come across "Hold Me Down", an extremely melodic number that best exemplifies Minus the Bear's sound, while raising the bar musically and still retaining their influences from their prior albums at the same time, which is very difficult for most bands to accomplish nowadays. "The Thief" is a totally groove laden track that may seem totally out of left field when you first hear it, but it will grow on you after repeated listens with its harmonic keyboards brought to you courtesy of Alex Rose, who also provides backing vocals on this song and various others. "Animal Backwards" is a keyboard and synth based opus that sounds linear in fashion in the sense that it borrows elements from the previous song, "Into the Mirror", and allows it to mold together in the next track without instrumental breaks in between, so that it sounds like one self sufficient song rather than two entirely different songs altogether.
As we begin to close out the album, we hear "Dayglow Vista Rd.", a melodic and spacey jam that displays Jake's vocals once again hard at work here on this one, and the rest of the band compliments each other so well musically with each member bringing something different to the table, and when it comes together it fits along perfectly. The album concludes with "Fooled By the Night", a dramatically slowed down, bare bones effort that displays Jake's vocals in its purest form: raw, beautiful, and dynamic with some earthy instrumentation that allow the song to aid in bringing the album to a close on a low key scale. It's not often that we hear a band who have continually evolved with their first release, and have sounded more and more different with each subsequent album, and have also moved away from the sound on their first release, while still retaining their small and loyal fanbase in the process. It's a very difficult task, but Minus the Bear prove they are successful on accomplishing this fruitful task and continuing to evolve musically as all other artists strive to do.
All in all, a marvelous and well rounded effort from Minus the Bear that shows their transition into a more melodic frame of mind, yet still retaining musical elements of their past releases and fusing them together to create a unique and dynamic effort here. Highly recommended!
Album Score: 4.5/5
Track Listing:
- My Time
- Summer Angel
- Secret Country
- Hold Me Down
- Excuses
- The Thief
- Into the Mirror
- Animal Backwards
- Dayglow Vista Rd.
- Fooled By the Night
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