Artist Minus The Bear

“Traditional” isn’t a word that springs to mind when listening to Minus The Bear. Still, singer-guitarist Jake Snider made a leap to good, old-fashioned—if ingeniously tweaked—pop songcraft when he formed the Seattle band in 2001. Minus The Bear has devised a sound full of cryptic experimentalism and rich, complex melody over the course of a string of stunning releases. The quantum-level hooks and debauched subject matter of 2007’s Planet Of Ice resurface on 2010’s Omni. The record’s showroom-floor-slick production and night-owl narratives may have fans scratching their heads, but there’s enough guitar-bound weirdness and hip-slipping time-signature shifts on Omni to please the diehards.

Updated 09/27/2011