To Everest and Back: EPing with Golden Bear

Austin indie-pop outfit Golden Bear describe their sound as "galactic-forest rock," a well-fitting tag for the starry-eyed, sepia-toned EP Everest, which makes for a fantastic soundtrack to high-school nostalgia or first kiss euphoria. In fact, sing-in-your-car tracks like "All the Stars" seem to be begging to score a scene of Friday Night Lights. All this makes sense given Golden Bear’s shared proclivities with fellow Austinites Explosions in the Sky for panoramic scope and otherworldly instrumentation. But the landscapes visited by the two bands are light-years apart- if Explosions in the Sky projects a pristine, stark lunar wasteland, Golden Bear is channeling senior skip day on Mars.

Everest does not offer any evidence of experimentation by the band, as is often the function of an EP released the year after a sophomore album. It’s a solid, likable extension of the proudly infectious power-pop that should have made Golden Bear more of a name by now, given their obvious mastery of straightforward guitar riffs, pop hooks, and indie notebook-sketch adorableness. Ours is not a hard market for doe-eyed boys next door selling campfire makeout music—to say nothing of bands named after zoo animals—so why aren’t we hearing more about these guys?

Golden Bear’s obvious talent may in fact be working against them by underscoring just how much better they could be. Everest’s tracks all feel like well-loved, already broken in sneakers. There are no mis-steps here, but there is a lack of spontaneity to them—the kind of immediacy that causes even songs executed with far less skill to pop into our heads out of the blue and make us get off the couch to put that album on. For a glimpse of more memorable Golden Bear, listen to the quirky track "Galaxy Queen" from their 2007 release, To The Farthest Star.