Photo by Elise Shively
When you first listen to Minus the Bear, it registers in your cranium as radio-friendly, indie-tinged pop. But listen closer, and you’ll hear intricately woven, kaleidoscopic parts hidden within—disparate elements like live sampling, contrapuntal melodic guitar parts, math-metal-inspired polymetric riffs, and sometimes just balls-to-wall shred. For evidence, one must look no further than MTB’s fifth LP, Infinity Overhead.
“You’re peeling layers upon layers and hearing something you didn’t hear the first time,” says Dave Knudson, guitarist for the Seattle-based quintet “which is how great music should be.”
Because of those shifting, seemingly inconsistent parts, the group’s music can be difficult to classify. Their perpetually changing sound can be directly tied in to Knudson’s everexpanding musical headspace. Like many guitarists who grew up in the ’80s, Knudson was initially drawn to guitar after hearing Metallica. “I picked up guitar after hearing … And Justice for All. I was, like, ‘Holy shit—what the hell is this? I gotta play guitar!’” He later moved on to progressive bands like Yes and King Crimson, then punk and hardcore, and then to IDM (intelligent dance music, aka “braindance”), which inspired the Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler-driven looping madness that has become a central part of his guitar approach.
“A few years ago, I started listening to a lot of electronic music like Four Tet and Caribou—sampling and glitchy stuff. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a cool sound. I wonder if I can reproduce that on guitar,’ and that’s where a lot of the sampling stuff came from. I discovered I could do that if I just sampled it into the DL4 and made it double-time.”
For MTB’s 2010 release, Omni, the band looked past their inner circle and called on Grammy-winning producer Joe Chiccarelli, who introduced a stronger emphasis on keyboard and synth textures, but this year’s Infinity Overhead finds the band revisiting their formative, guitar-centric sound.
Minus the Bear’s sound seems
to evolve from album to
album. Which side of your
musical personality came out
on Infinity Overhead?
When we first formed in 2001,
we had come from a more
punk-rock/hardcore community,
but I think we all wanted
to break out of the more rigid
genre rules and experiment with
cool, complex technical music
but in a pop format. The first
couple of records have a lot of
dance-y stuff on them, like Daft
Punk-inspired indie-rock stuff.
Then we got more into prog
rock—Planet of Ice was sort of
a journey through late-’60s,
early-’70s prog rock. Now I
think we’re coming back and
joining both of those loves with
this new record.
What is your favorite track on
the album?
I think the consensus is that
“Diamond Lightning” is the
favorite for all of us. Everybody
loved how that song was written
and the fact that we wrote it as
one piece of music with “Toska”
together. It was written that way
and is always played in rehearsals
as one song.
That’s surprising, because
“Toska” has such a different
vibe—it’s more upbeat and
has more aggressive guitar,
like that repeating, keyboardesque
figure midway through
the song. Is that part tapped?
No, it’s just picked—a lot of
hammer-ons, pull-offs, and picking.
There are a couple of songs
that have two-hand tapping, like
the main riff in “Lonely Gun.”
That crazy, almost synthed-outsounding
part is a two-handed
tapping riff.
“Lonely Gun” also has some
crazy-fast alternate picking.
Yeah, in the bridge there’s a
pretty fast picking part—there’s a
time and a place for everything.
Like, on this record there’s a time
for a song like “Cold Company”
to be totally extreme and kind
of flashy, and there’s a time to
be a little more restrained like
on “Diamond Lightning” or
“Listing,” where it’s just more
of a traditional acoustic thing.
There are some songs that don’t
need a brutal, insane tapping
solo. The tapping stuff was what
a lot of people loved about the
first couple of records. I love
doing the two-handed tapping
stuff, but using it more for a
rhythmic riff rather than for a
flashy solo. But I think there are
times for both extremes.
MTB gets intimate at Seattle’s Cornet Tavern. Photo by Amber Zbitnoff
Although you started out in
the punk/hardcore scene,
the guitar parts on Infinity
Overload are a far cry from
bashing away at power
chords. “Lies and Eyes” and
“Diamond Lightning” are just
two examples among many
that have several independent
melodic layers going on
simultaneously. Where do you
get this concept of melodic
rhythm guitar, and how do
you avoid sonic clutter?
Yeah, it’s not a three-chord
punk band. We strive to create
earworms that get stuck in your
head—whether it’s a keyboard
melody or a guitar line or a
vocal hook. I think we all have
a pretty good ear for when
something isn’t working with
another thing. At this point,
having been in the band for
10-plus years, we all understand
what each person’s role is and
how that works for the band.
Alex [Rose, keyboards/vocals] is
really good at coming up with
parts that weave in and out.
There are keyboard lines that
are more prominent and take
center stage, but a lot of times
Alex’s melodies pop up between
different notes and stuff. Jake
[Snider, lead vocals/guitar] is
great at complementing my guitar
parts with other things. Even
though there’s a lot of stuff
going on, Matt [Bayles, Infinity
Overhead producer/former fulltime
keyboardist] is such a good
engineer and producer that he’s
able to wrangle those things in
and have them make sense—
although sometimes we’ll be
like, “That’s going too far … .”
Did that happen on the
Infinity Overhead sessions?
I did some overdubs that didn’t
make the record. We were like,
“Let’s try this and see what
happens,” and then we listened
back and were like, “That
doesn’t really fit the vibe.” So
sometimes, yeah, you’ve got to
rein yourself in. With this band,
sometimes what you don’t play
is more important than what
you do play.
Although the guitar parts
can be intricate and complex,
there is a live and spontaneous
feel in the execution.
Yeah, it’s not so rigid and
played exactly as we wrote it
in the rehearsal space, and that
adds to some of the personality
of the record. We did, like,
10 to 12 takes of a song to get
a really great drum take and a
great guitar take, so sometimes
there were some liberties or
flourishes added here or there. I
also did a lot of guitar overdubs
to fill out the sound, so some of
those embellishments may have
happened as experimentation
during the overdub process.