CMU Playlists

Playlist: Minus The Bear

By | Published on Thursday 2 August 2012

Minus The Bear

Formed in 2001, Seattle indie-rock quintet Minus The Bear released their debut album, ‘Highly Refined Pirates’, the following year, memorable as much for its music as it song titles – such as ‘Hey, Wanna Throw Up? Get Me Naked’ and ‘I Lost All My Money At The Cock Fights’. By the time they got to the follow-up, 2005’s ‘Menos el Oso’, they’d refined both their sound and their titles, and have continued to build a fervent fanbase ever since.

Next month the band will release their fifth album ‘Infinity Overhead’ through Big Scary Monsters, with a limited edition seven-inch single, featuring the album’s opening track, ‘Steel And Blood’, on 20 Aug. As well as that, on 17 Aug, the band will headline a show at Heaven in London.

And ahead of all of that, we asked frontman Jake Snider to put together a playlist for us.

JAKE SNIDER’S TEN
Click here to listen to Jake’s playlist in Spotify, and then read on to find out more about his choices.

01 Fleetwood Mac – The Ghost
A killer transitional song, getting close to the pop of the Buckingham Nicks era with the late Bob Welch on vocals. One of the best choruses in the band’s history. One of the best choruses in rock history. Killer guitar lick intro as well.

02 My Brightest Diamond – Be Brave
Starts sparse. Builds instrumentation and intensity as it moves on. Self referential. Gritty, “I wish I’d written these” lyrics. Becomes absolutely enormous.

03 Leonard Cohen – Chelsea Hotel #2
Perfectly intimate, quiet, and soulful. Sexually and memorably explicit. You hear it and you’ve been there.

04 Talk Talk – I Don’t Believe In You
One of my favourite recordings… unreal realistic drums, haunting woodwinds and vocals. How they placed the percussion so perfectly I’d like to know.

05 Genesis – Dancing With The Moonlight Knight
Very pastoral, English as hell by design, this is prog that progresses through the English musical canon by the time we’re a third of the way through. Quaint and dainty to heavy as fuck.

06 Al di Meola – Flight Over Rio
The man can play guitar. This instrumental’s deep, grinding synths complete the melodic shredding. The band is spot on, Brazilian grooves, bass funkery, drum flangery… couldn’t make this record today.

07 The Doobie Brothers – You’re Made That Way
Doobies. Michael McDonald. Pop Gold. “What she wants for me to be, I will be”.

08 Elton John – Burn Down The Mission
Elton’s big US hits never got me. Only when I started listening to his albums in their entirety did I find the best material. This is one of them. All about taking it back from ‘The Man’ just to stay alive. Burn it down! A lyrical and arrangement masterpiece.

09 Father John Misty – I’m Writing A Novel
“I’m writing a novel/because it’s never been done before!” This song is a hallucinogenic trip gone right. I think most of us have been there by now…

10 Steely Dan – Bad Sneakers
I love this shit. I feel like if you listen to this song you’ll know where I’m coming from. Or where I wish I were coming from. Is that Michael McDonald I hear singing backups?



READ MORE ABOUT: