The Norwich six-piece Bearsuit can produce some of the most cacophonous assaults of noise. Sometimes those tumults can override the general sense that they have a knack for crafting songs that sticks. The band has matured to the point where Belle and Sebastian comparisons are null and void. Those were only rooted in that fact that the band employs male-female vocal chatter and the deft flute playing of Jan Robertson. Robertson also plays guitar, percussion, keyboard, and sings like a banshee, on OH:IO. That seems to be the norm in a band where only the drummer doesn’t scream, coo, and sing into the microphone. In their third release they continue the tradition of mixing art punk, noise rock, screaming girl-guy chants, and electronic tomfoolery. They sound like shaking Deerhoof and Architecture in Helsinki in a bag and releasing them in a studio. Despite this, Bearsuit sound altogether foreign with their stop-start smorgasbords.

When you first start listening to the electronically filtered yelling whizzing past your ears like a Doppler effect nightmare on “Jupiter Force ” you start getting a tad nervous. Not in the boogieman sense but just some added tension is stirred around in your gut. The tribal yelling doesn’t really let up as manic horns parry in the background and searing Sonic Youth guitars clash and squeal. In fact the claustrophobia continues until the punk guy-girl chants on the semi-automatic latest single “More Soul Than Wigan Casino.”

You only come up for breath again as nursery rhyme strings break into clipped bravado on the comically titled “Steven F**king Spielberg.” Purportedly the song took a year to make and it’s restraint amid all of those instrumentation choices pushes Bearsuit into electrifying areas. The string riff careening off the side of the violin’s bridge on “Speilberg” sounds like something from ELO 2 (if Jeff Lynne fronted a band as mad-cap as Bearsuit). It’s also only a matter of time when lead singer Iain Ross wins a Graham Coxon impression contest. On the Theremin haunt jaunt “Look A Bleached Coral Faced Crow With Jewels For Eyes” he channels Coxon’s a certain degree of playfulness and nostalgia as he repeats “I can’t go in because its freezing.” Fingers snap, guitars crunch and then noodle into the sunset. An ebullient horn pushes everything into the fizzy electronic punch of “Foxy Boxer.” Wow, that was intense.

OH:IO’s instrumentation tends to hold a market on that severe case of manic disorder that noise bands possess. The song topics follow suit, ranging from romance with lizards (“Dinosaur Heart”) to a mission to colonize the star system on the lovely flute stomping anthem “Mission IO Must Not Fail.” The chorale outro on “Mission IO Must Not Fail” is the most beautiful part of an album that wears its jagged edges like a badge.

Somehow the band glues all the makeshift pieces of sound on each song into a cohesive album. How do they do it? There are truly striking parts to this album, like the aforementioned “Mission IO,” that keep you interested when you have to bushwhack through a thicket of coronet, flute, Keytar, and accordion. The threads connecting all OH:IO’s fits and starts mask its frenzied imperfections. They even have a song entitled “Keep It Together, Somehow” to prove it.
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Links
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