Bearsuit 2021
A Small Blue Car
Driving an avant-garde vehicle to the verge of delirium, Edinburgh demiurge delivers dispatches from distant vistas.
Lately, Caledonia has been bustling with weird melodic activities that manifested themselves in visitations by the opuses of somebodies called Bunny and Eamon who’s styled as The Destroyer despite his apparent attempts if not to create new sounds then to locate these in another world. Here’s the reason behind this artist’s rustle of a voice which could be menacing in its fleshlessness weren’t the singing drenched in delicate acoustic lace alongside dry synthesizers. The results of such sonic approach seem simultaneously alien and alluring – and haunting.
Thus, floating into focus on a vibrant six-string twang, “Silver Shadow” marries deceptively monotonous murmur to murder balladry which would otherwise feel brittle like parchment, with ivories offering a much wider panorama towards the piece’s end, before “Tomahawk Den” turns the drone into an accordion groan and unfolds a retrofuturistic, Weimaresque vaudeville for the willing mind to waltz to and reflect on life’s vagaries until psychedelic guitar swirl, heavy stomp and electronic ripple bring forth a hypnagogic seafaring adventure. It’s a concept thing, a few brief instrumentals helping the platter flow in a cinematic way, and the effervescent buzz of a funereal “Humanity Is Coming” is arresting enough, yet when an aural onslaught at the onset of “Avalanche” is removed in favor of half-whispered intimacy and double-tracked vocals the waves of bliss descend on the listener.
Still, it’s the lyrical strum that shoots the mellifluous blues in the heart of “My Drive” and fill “Nothing Like Anything” with soul, as playful whistle is woven into its spaced-out fabric, so once “The Tide To Steal Away” forms a majestic finale out of orchestral ethereality, the destroying of one’s ego will be complete. And that’s a weirdly wondrous activity in itself.
****4/5
