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It seems like the music I've been getting most excited about lately is stuff that pushes or crosses musical boundaries in new, interesting ways, and Bearsuit fit that bill to a tee. This UK art-pop-punk six-piece produces a gleeful collision--a pileup, really--of seemingly disparate sounds. It's no wonder that Bearsuit were so highly esteemed by the late John Peel and that they routinely placed so highly on his annual Festive Fifty countdown (the song "Chargr" was #2 last year): they perpetrate exactly the kind of artful boundary-smashing that Peelie championed. They were nice enough to send us a disc containing their debut album, the excellently-titled Cat Spectacular!, along with a bunch of single and E.P. tracks (many of which are available for free download on their website).
Sonically, Bearsuit mash up the sweetness of twee-pop with the fuzzed-out crash-pop punk energy of Boyracer with the wacky experimental sounds of The Flaming Lips. They take an anything-goes approach to arrangement and song structure, with all the various elements smashed together with dizzying creativity and seeming reckless abandon. On one track you'll find celestial vocals combined with jagged noise and herky-jerky drums; on another, disco-punk with crazy keyboards; on another, Swirlies-esque vintage-synth-happy shoegazer elements; on another, low-tech drum-n-bass with digitally futzed-up vocals and crazy guitar, and ending with violins; another chops up funhouse music with stop-start punk and garnishes with baroque vocal harmonies, handclaps, trumpet, and recorder. Co-ed vocals throughout are alternately coy and shouty. There's an overall loose feel to the album, a slight sloppiness, that keeps things sounding fresh and immediate; even though some of the songs are fairly complex, none of them feel belabored or fussed-over. The sound can be arty and challenging at times, but it's never inaccessible; "Itsuko Got Married" is probably one of the strangest pop songs ever to get lodged in your brain, and almost definitely the only one with a vocal break in binary ("Zero zero one zero one..."). Everything scintillates with the band's crackling, urgent energy, and the songs fairly burst with ideas. And as great as the individual songs are, it really takes a full album to appreciate the scope of what Bearsuit do. The full-length format lets the band explore their more experimental side and represents a quantum leap forward from the early singles. I would put Bearsuit in the same league with currently-hyped boundary-crossing UK artists like M.I.A. and The Go! Team; here's hoping that, like those acts, Bearsuit start getting some wider recognition beyond their home country. (mike.04.05)
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