Minus the Bear

With the release of their fifth full length record, Planet of Ice, Minus The Bear has taken an already defined sound to a whole new level. They’ve replaced their long, quirky song titles with expansive, experimental works, and have produced their most cohesive album to date. Their current tour will lead them all over the west coast, including a stop at Coachella. Bass player Cory Murchy took time out of his schedule to talk to Synthesis about the band’s new record, touring and the future of Minus The Bear.

The west coast leg of the spring tour with The Big Sleep and Portugal. The Man started just yesterday. That’s a pretty kick-ass lineup. How did that come about — are you all friends?
We didn’t know anybody. None of us knew each other. We’d heard great things about Portugal. The Man, and had tried to kinda set something up in the past, so finally it just worked out for both of us. And The Big Sleep we just met. They’re great people.

By the time this tour is over, you’ll have made an appearance at Coachella in Indio and Bonnaroo in Tennessee. How do you like playing bigger festivals with a ton of different acts as opposed to smaller, more typical tour-type shows?
Well, it’s great. It’s a hectic day, kinda stressful. There’s a million other bands around and you don’t really ever have a soundcheck, you know. There’s a lot of stuff that’s kinda crazy. A festival like Coachella is just run so well and so smooth that it’s hard not to have a great time. Some of the other ones are not run as smoothly and you notice it. It’s just a different experience, like when we’re on tour, the people that are gonna come out are all of our fans and people that actually know who we are, where as a festival can be kind of like, “All right, they’re just here in this field, so why not check out this band?” But I mean, I think we’ve been lucky enough to win over fans most of the time.

Do you have any favorite tour destinations?
Right now Hawaii is pretty fun as far as a tour destination. We just played over there. I mean, the east coast is always great; New York is always a blast. Philly
you know, we always have fun in Boston. We also have a lot of fun in Seattle too.

Any places you haven’t played but would like to?
I would like to go to Mexico and play. We haven’t done that yet. We’re going to Maine at the end of this tour, and that’ll be the first time any of us have played there.

Planet of Ice is your first album with Alex Rose on the keys, but I read that Matt Bayles [former keyboardist] played a huge role in the production of the record. How did this play out in the studio?
Well, his strong point was definitely in the studio. I mean, he’s a producer and an engineer in his own right. We knew that he was eventually gonna duck out of the band and continue building his career and we were gonna continue building our career. So he still helps, or has helped on the last record.

I think my favorite song on the new album is “Knights.” What do you prefer off of Planet?
I like “Dr. L’Ling” a lot. That’s still one of my favorites. “Lotus” always kinda gets me in the balls, which is nice. I like “Part 2” a whole lot too, just cause it’s a departure from what we’ve done in the past. So, those are some standouts.

It seems like on this record you guys took more time getting a song from its beginning to its ending. There’s a lot of spacey, jam-type work going on. Did you come into this record with any different goals from your past work?
Yeah, I mean we didn’t set any limitations on what we were doing, so if a part tended to go on longer than what we’re normally used to, we didn’t necessarily shy away from it. If it worked then we’d keep it and if it didn’t we’d cut it.  



You’ve released a couple of videos for Planet [“Knights” and “Throwin’ Shapes”]. Were you heavily involved in the concepts behind the videos? Is it something you see the band doing more of in the future?
Yeah, I’m sure we’ll make more; it’s just kind of the nature of the game at this point. But we haven’t been too hands-on with it. That’s one of the things we’ve kind of given up the most as far as ideas and stuff in relation to our music. But, in the future, I see us getting more involved with it. I think it’s a great medium, and once we start becoming more comfortable with trying out things we might be able to do some cool things.

Planet has been out for a while now, and fans have had a chance to listen to the record. How is the response in relation to your older material?
I think it’s been pretty good. I think some of the new stuff translates really well live and I think when people have an opportunity to experience it live, it sort of changes their perspective of the songs. I don’t know it’s just more rockin’ live. So people have totally been responsive of the old stuff as well as the new stuff.

Where is the band heading after this tour? Will there be more dates, or will you be logging more time in the studio?
We’re gonna try to write, we’re doing some festivals this summer might do some European festivals — haven’t figured that out yet — but we’re gonna try to write, try to hunker down.

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