Following 2005’s Menos El Oso and a remix album released a year later, Seattle’s Minus the Bear return with their best release to date. With Planet of Ice, the indie-synth wizards push onward without keyboardist Matt Bayles and deliver a slightly progressive album of their signature sound.
The opening track is solid with an upbeat tempo, a catchy chorus, and a vibe that fills the listener with a sense of simple contentment. Followed by “Ice Monster,” which has a distinctly melancholy, beautiful chorus and overall arrangement, and later “White Mystery,” a straight-up ballad, the tracks follow a natural flow over the course of ten installments that are equally effective when standing alone or together.
Few bands have cornered their sound the way Minus the Bear has; their music is unmistakably their own. This is a feat that we take for granted because they make having a signature sound seem easy.
Whether Minus the Bear are stuck in a stylistic slump or they are driven with the purpose of refining a sound that is utterly theirs remains to be seen. What is certain is that they keep on getting better at what they do, and Planet of Ice is, if nothing else, a testament to the fact.
– Chris Smith
Minus the Bear (Suicide Squeeze)