Bear Claw, Slow Speed: Deep Owls

Bear Claw is a Chicago-area band that uses two basses instead of the standard guitar and bass lineup. This gives them a different kind of sound. However, they usually use one of the basses like a guitar (including the distortion pedal), so it’s not quite as different as you might expect. Their sound borrows a lot of Shellac and Slint. Unfortunately, it doesn’t incorporate quite enough, because on Slow Speed: Deep Owls, their second album, these guys don’t have that much going on.

They are tight on what are some technically demanding riffs, but the riffs for the most part aren’t very interesting. There are maybe three songs here with interesting musical parts — the first, “Distant Apology,” has some cool riffs and a nicely plotted intro. “Stubborn Agenda” sets free its inner Shellac and creates some punishing propulsion. The second half of “Slippage” has some cool riffs and a nice use of dynamics, and the ending is fun. “Slow Speed: Deep Owls,” an instrumental, passes a melody back and forth in call-and-response fashion in a way you don’t usually hear from a band like this. But beyond those tracks, the rest of the songs don’t have anything special happening.

The biggest problem is the vocals. Two of the guys sing at different times, and one has a really annoying voice. The worst vocal performance is on “Distant Apology,” where the singer sounds like Cookie Monster — it’s too bad, because it could have been a much better song. And thne he does the same thing to “Stubborn Agenda.” The other problem is that the melodies they sing are not very good. The one solid song here, melody-wise, is “Embrace,” which has interesting riffs and a surprisingly catchy hard rock-style melody that the annoying guy can’t do much damage to. The rest, unfortunately, have melodies that, even if they were sung better, still wouldn’t be particularly interesting.

These guys do have some spark, but not as much as you would hope. They’ve got an interesting sound, musical technique, and some decent musical ideas. What they need to do is hire a decent singer with better melodic ideas and leave the Cookie Monster vocals behind. Unless they want to do a children’s record — hmm, they might actually have something there…