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 Caught in the Carousel - Music Reviews and More
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Golden Bear
To the Farthest Star
C-Side Records
One thing to know about a band coming out of Austin: they’d better be good at performing live. The Austin music scene physically occupies an intensely compressed section of the city and plays host to SXSW, an annual music and media festival, as well as featuring live music year round. In Austin, if you are true to your craft, you can perform live and sound as good if not better than the recording. Golden Bear’s second album To The Last Star makes me want to see them live in Austin. You know what I mean—sometimes you're afraid that the live show might not live up to the recorded version, or worse yet, your expectations. But this is one show that I would love to catch. To The Last Star feels like a set in a club that just happened to get recorded. It's perfectly natural, relaxed and full of life, minus the bar backhauling a clanking tub of empties and some off-kilt clapping in the crowd. I feel like I'm standing on a gummy floor in a small club when I listen to this record.
To The Farthest Star is intimate and exuberantly optimistic. The orchestration and arrangements are impeccable without being arrogant. There’s a pleasant gentleness that hovers around the edges of each song, a kind of in-the-moment frailty. It’s a freshness that’s believable and lovable. Even when the power chords are predictable, as in the down stroke guitar chords of the title track, they are softened by wispy repeated "Oh yeah's," which are eventually joined by the lightest violin and an It’s a Small World-inspired sing along. The group singing is exercised in bits and pieces to great effect on most of the tracks. It could have gone very wrong, too cheesy and freakishly happy, but instead it warms against the complex instrumentation. With soaring arrangements by Chris Gardiner, the band’s keyboardist, and the help of the Royal Forest Orchestra and the Forest Chorus, the lineup on this album caps at 17 musicians. There’s basically always, even in the sparsest moments, at least 3 musicians at work. It’s not rushed or crowded, even with all the supporting musicians in the mix, even when it’s an up- tempo rock song. There’s plenty of breathing room and a relaxed, almost effortless grace to the album.
Golden Bear has captured something special on this album: an unpretentious love of craft. They know how to rock out but also wind down to a whimsical lilting piano riff. There’s no clear line of demarcation between songs—it’s one continuous musical parade. And that’s what makes To The Farthest Star so unique. Rather than utilizing recording techniques to capture jarring and bizarre sounds that are cold because they cannot be traced back to a human, they prefer to keep you safely in step with them. It’s not about showing off or alienating the listener, it's about creating an inviting atmosphere for you that you could just as easily listen to on a long drive as you could at a crowded backyard party. The core sound here is exuberant pop with an American rock and roll connoisseur’s sensibility.
Golden Bear taffy flexes their sound from a pure country guitar twang to fuzzy distortion and driving piano rhythm within the same song. They rely heavily on the pleasantly monotonous and driving rhythm of tight percussion from Andy McAllister and Brent Pennington’s bass lines to create a pop canvas for the suddenly there sensation of a sensuous cello, fluttering violin, urgent trumpet, and lusty French horn. On songs like "Devils Painted Red," "Glitter Girls," "New Day" and "Tonight's The Night," the "wooh-ooh-oohs and la-la-la’s are so damn catchy, you're humming right along.
It’s a coherent sound that is distinct and fun. Minimal distortion, the voices and instruments are recorded true to life. Golden Bear has a penchant for a jam-style song format, where the last minutes sound like everyone in the room grabbed an instrument and just started playing along—and it works. Whereas Golden Bear are definitely accomplished musicians in their own right, a few songs are uncomfortably reminiscent of other bands—"Darkness Sets In" is a dead ringer for Spoon’s "The Way We Get By" and "New Day" feels like an impressive Apples in Stereo replica. Chris Gregory has an uncanny vocal resemblance to Doug Martsch of Built To Spill, but that is by no means an insult, but instead offered as a frame of reference. Gregory’s speak/sing style anchors the musical cacophony. Meaningful lyrics are not the strong suit here—it’s really more about the sound.
No doubt To The Farthest Star was a load of fun to record—the pleasure emanates and makes it even more enjoyable to listen to. It’s clear that the hands on deck are experienced and patient. This is s a rare find: a band that’s fun to listen to and has smart arrangements; smart in a multi-textured and accomplished way as opposed to simply and formulaically clever.
— Vanessa Arce
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