I should be honest: up until now, I haven’t really listened to a whole lot of Minus The Bear. My first and last time doing so before preparing to review this album was while road-tripping with a friend, who said, as he turned up the volume, “These guys are great, they sing about drinking and philosophy.”

“Really original topic for a guy to sing about,” I thought to myself, “and how like some of the asshats I’ve dated! Tell me, would you like some Paxil with that Bertrand Russell?”

Uh… yeah. To make a long story short, I never got into MTB–my impressions of them were that, though they were definitely following in the footsteps of Dismemberment Plan musically, they were more of a boys’ club lyrically. By my standards, they were backsliding (I’m not saying that chicks aren’t into also into drinking and philosophy, it’s just that we covered that territory years ago when Indigo Girls released “Closer to Fine”). Anyway, like D-Plan, Minus The Bear are putting out that automatic indie yawn-trigger–an album of remixes. Unlike A People’s History of The Dismemberment Plan, which is a retrospective of D-Plan’s career, Interpretaciones Del Oso is a reinterpretation of MTB’s second album, Menos el Oso. Wow, that reminds me–remember when The Faint remixed their third album and it really sucked?

So to recap, dear reader, there were up to three strikes against this album–(1) boy’s club, (2) oh-god-not-another-album-remix, and (3) it’s a little early in the band’s musical career to do (2)–before I even threw it on my decks.

Except that, well–oh God, shoot me now–I kinda *liked* it. And this is after test-driving it in the kitchen, the living room, AND the bedroom. Oh yes, that’s right. I was NAPPING to it. On the one hand, that’s not a particularly ringing endorsement, but on the other? Whoever parsed MTB into something to which I could get shut-eye (it was a GOOD nap, people, a really wonderful winter nap) is somewhat talented, and knows that the way for the indie neopatriarchy to best invade my subconscious is to do it in my sleep. It’s true that the remixes in and of themselves don’t rely on much not already done in electronica for years–I mean, some of this sounds like the soundtrack for “The X-Files”–but it’s an interesting product considering the kind of material being parsed.

The other way in which this album sets itself apart from other remix collections is that it’s cohesive. Unlike a lot of electronic “interpretations” of other artists, which generally feature a few highlights and a majority of lowlights (I’m thinking, for example, the juxtaposition of 808 State’s brilliant remix of “Made of Stone” with some of the other more “WTF??” remixes on the Stone Roses’ The Remixes album) Interpretaciones Del Oso sounds less like a comp and more like an actual album. It’s a bit of an impressive feat to come up with an overall mood for a remix album (on the other hand, the overall mood may also arise from the fact that the mixes, though well-done, are still somewhat standard fare).

My favorite track at the moment is the Alias remix of MTB’s erstwhile single “Pachuca Sunrise.” It’s true that it reminds me a little of, like, Anggun (you might remember her track “Snow on the Sahara” from the Lilith Fair Free Music Sampler, Volume 1), with a delicious patriarchal twist. “Don’t cry / I’ll bring this home to you”? Ya know, I think I kind of like my caveman hunter-gatherer ballads melted down into mellow electronic beats.

Release date: February 20, 2007
Label: Suicide Squeeze Records

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