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Review: Twin Bears - Twin Bears [EP]

Self Released // "The under-produced aspect of the EP isn’t normally problem for up and coming groups, but it’s hard to ignore"

by Huw Hopkins, July 19th, 2012 and has been Read 648 times.
Last Edited by: Jack Stovin July 22nd, 2012.

Accents can make or break an artist. To many people, an Irish rapper is inaudible, yet somehow, someone spitting from the streets of Hackney is as clear as Fire Exit sign in a dark hallway. Northerners seem to have taken one genre to be their own. For sure, Londoners have their fair share of talent but Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys, and Franz Ferdinand rule supreme in the world of indie, each band tied to North of England in one way or another.

When the opening drumbeat builds in volume, you realise Matt Owen, the man behind the Twin Bears kit, is playing the first thing his drum teacher taught him. Fear not. Un-tuned guitars soon arrive, as do the dull, stretching vocals of Michael Owen. Before you know it The Smiths have returned, with all their doom, misery and lack of musical talent. It is refreshing to hear distortion in the chorus sections, cranked up to saturation point in ‘You Got The Fire’, if only so the rest of the music is drowned out slightly.

LISTEN // 'Always'

http://soundcloud.com/twinbears/02-always

The positive side of Twin Bears self-titled EP, is that it doesn’t stick to the dreadful self-indulgent noise for too long. ‘Always’ is structured with intelligence and originality. There are still the overly reverberating guitars of Owen and Jamie Wilson, but as this is a mainstay of the indie genre, it’s hard to judge them too harshly on this feature. The under-produced aspect of the EP isn’t normally problem for up and coming groups, but it’s hard to ignore the ugly snare sound in an otherwise decent song.

The under-production is in some ways a product of the genre as well, especially for band from a northerly city of England. When you start driving past Birmingham, artists tend to avoid modern recording techniques, which is a beautiful thing in it’s own right. However, the typical indie sound of ‘By The River’ is almost too typical, with a chord progression unwittingly lifted from ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’.



Twin Bears are young, and perhaps with maturity, an original sound will develop, they’ve certainly proven they have the potential from the EP’s second track. ‘Last Year Of Our Lives’ unfortunately doesn’t live up to this. Despite the song exhibiting the unique structure that made ‘Always’ work so well, it is the stretching vocals again that let the final song down. At the start, the melody is so low, lyrics are muffled, and toward the end it just sounds tuneless.

Maybe we shouldn’t write-off Twin Bears just yet, but much like everything else in the North of England, they are a few years behind everyone else, and haven’t realised that there hasn’t been a good indie song in about five years. This band, won’t be leading a rejuvenation.

LISTEN // Last Year Of Our Lives

http://soundcloud.com/twinbears/04-last-year-of-our-lives