Minus the Bear - Highly Refined Pirates

Minus the Bear
Highly Refined Pirates (2002)
Suicide Squeeze

About a year ago, my good friend Brendan put together some data discs for me filled with hundreds of albums of bands he thought I might like. At the time, my interest in indie rock had been recently piqued, and knowing that Brendan had long been into that type of music, I turned to him for guidance. Though I had long listened to more mainstream indie rock acts like Wilco and My Morning Jacket, I had not yet gone deep into that territory.

Brendan provided the CD’s, and one of the first ones I actually listened to all the way through was this gem by Minus the Bear, a band I had never heard before that time. I remember putting it on and being instantly mesmerized, but also overwhelmed; if everything Brendan gave me was this good, I had a lot of listening to do.

The thing about Highly Refined Pirates is that it’s so damn catchy. Nearly everything on this record is a toe-tapper. Interesting guitar parts and synthesizer pieces make way for incredibly memorable bridges and choruses, and then wraps up in an end-of-song explosion that leaves you borderline head-banging. Not only is Highly Refined Pirates highly entertaining, it’s also interesting; there’s a lot going on musically that I hadn’t heard anywhere before.

Allmusic.com’s review of the album mentions the term “math rock” in relation to this album, and I’d say that’s a good way to look at it. Though the human element of the instruments and vocals is certainly evident, the whole thing sounds like it was assembled and spit out by a computer. That’s not to say it sounds like techno music, but it sounds like there’s a non-human ambiance around the whole project that provides a nice dichotomy of sounds throughout the record.

Even the dreaded instrumental-only interstitial material, long overused and poorly done in rock (with ambient sounding drones or other worthlessness) and rap (with embarrassing skits and spoken word material) pays off here. Though interstitial material like this is by definition filler, it’s actually interesting and enjoyable on this record. Some of the songs work with the tracks that they bridge together and sometimes provide for a half-decent song on their own.

For some reason, I really enjoyed the lyrics and vocals on Highly Refined Pirates as well. Perhaps I’m identifying with the twenty-something yearning of the lyrical content. A lot of it comes off as corny, but there are great concepts and ideas buried in the corniness. To wit: in the great (but unfortunately titled) song “Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo”, vocalist Jake Snider sings the chorus,

“You said, my life’s like a bad movie,
I said, that’s true of all of us
You said, I’ve gotta wake up so fucking early
I said, maybe the director’s turned on us.”

In “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse”, another great song, Snider perfectly conveys the grandiose ideas of a disillusioned young man. In the song, he sings about traveling to Europe with his girlfriend and living the cultured life, complete with “absinthe after dinner”. The tone of the lyrics really works well with the way the compositions are arranged and written.

You may have noticed the relatively silly song titles mentioned above, and they are here in droves. The album features songs like “Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!”, “Hey, Wanna Throw Up?”, “I Lost All My Money at the Cock Fights”, and “Thanks for the Killer Game of Crisco”. Call me a traditionalist, but I feel like a song title should have some sort of connection to the song. Despite these ridiculous titles, it’s easier to remember which song is which when the song title makes sense in relation to the song. It’s a relatively minor quibble, because in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what a song is called, but the question would and should be asked by people who don’t know the group: If they don’t take their own songs seriously, why should we?

A-

John Lacey