Review Summary: It’s Minus The Bear…minus everything you love about Minus The Bear.
If you’re familiar with Minus The Bear, you know that they are an indie pop/rock group that love to incorporate saturated melodies with creative structures and progressions. And if you’re familiar with this type of music, it probably never occurred to you that this type of material could, or should, be remixed. Well,
Interpretaciones Del Oso is just that: a remix album of the band’s second full length,
Menos el Oso. Given the mellow and intricate nature of Minus the Bear’s music, how do the remixes of
Interpretaciones Del Oso fare with the original material of
Menos el Oso?
While most of the remixes found on
Interpretaciones Del Oso follow the structures of the original songs closely, the main problem is that they don’t really try to capture the original feel or charm of the material, and therefore succeed in transforming the songs into something less desirable. “Drilling”, originally a lush, progressive, heartfelt song, is remixed into some strange stop-start mess, featuring disorganized drums and grotesque frameworks. Both remixes of the mellow “This Ain’t a Surfin’ Movie” and “El Torrente” just seem to glitch and garble aimlessly while adding nothing enjoyable or creative to the original song, while both remixes of the harder-hitting “The Game Needed Me” and “The Fix” just brood along senselessly with swirls of noise. The “Michio’s Death Drive” remix is a strange entry, as it sounds so close to the original that it’s really hard to tell the two songs apart. While some of these songs might be interesting to listen to here and there, there really is no substance to be found in them, and I doubt most would go back for a second listen because of it.
And while most remixes sound somewhat like their counterparts, some remixes sound absolutely nothing like the originals. “Fulfill the Dream”, “Hooray” and “The Pig War” are all completely unrecognizable, which proves to be a good and a bad thing: these remixes prove to be enjoyable efforts, but since they sound nothing like the songs they’re remixing, they miss their mark by failing to harness what fans enjoyed about the original songs.
That leaves us with the only triumph of this album, which is the only remix that takes what’s enjoyable about the original song and interprets it into a very enjoyable effort: the “Pachuca Sunrise” remix. The stripped-down, subdued approach to the song fits beautifully, and the already endearing chorus of the original is further amplified with frothy swellings and whirling melodies. The end result is a dense, humble remix that is very different but still as enjoyable as the original.
I think we can all agree that the goal of a remix should be to top the original song in terms of enjoyment. Well, unfortunately, not only is there not a single remix found on
Interpretaciones Del Oso that tops the original effort, but you’d be hard pressed to find a remix that’s even enjoyable to listen to at all. What you can expect to find on
Interpretaciones Del Oso is largely a collection of cold, uncreative and overall awkward remixes that in no way embody the quality or enjoyment of the original songs. While I can praise the album for being experimental, and some might enjoy the album more because of that, it just seems that there are way too many missed opportunities here for anybody to give it any sort of meaningful praise. Overall,
Interpretaciones Del Oso it’s an admirable idea, but ultimately, it’s just very poorly executed and very disappointing.
