Mostly Bears
The Ed Mitchell Clinic
Funzalo Records
By Jose Fritz
Ed Mitchell was an alcoholic, which by itself, is unremarkable. I’ve had friends, foes, co-workers and colleagues that were all manners of drunk: binge drinkers, social drinkers, functional alcoholics, booze fiends, moonshiners, martini shakers, sizzurp suckers, methanol huffers, malt liquor swillers, whiskey sippers and the perpetually car-less DWI offender.
But Ed was special. Ed was a talking head on the BBC earning £100,000 a year. He was famous and his drunk-ass behavior fucked his shit up so bad he ended up unemployed, homeless, divorced and racked up a quarter million dollars in credit card debt. If there is such a thing as absolute rock-bottom, Ed was there.
Ed Mitchell is not in this band. Ed Mitchell has never even met this band nor has he likely even heard of them, but Mostly Bears have heard of him and for a band like them, one trying to make a damn point, that is enough. The Clinic in Ed Mitchell Clinic is where Ed went to clean up, where he went to change or die from liver failure and DTs. A place Patrick McGoohan called Degree Absolute.
Tucson isn’t like the rest of the world as you know it. Remember this is the same city that spawned Mr. Free and the satellite freakout. It’s a city where every band shares at least one member with the uber-band Golden Boots. There is no limitation on the sun-baked weirdness that can sprout on the far eastern side of the Sonoran hardpan.
The band celebrates the infinite possibilities of human failure, collapse and redemption on this record. “Melancholyism” writhes like there is no tomorrow and it’s very cold on that park bench at night. Vocals soar but don’t enter the castrato range of Thom Yorke. Instead Geoffrey Hidalgo holds back, lurking in the shadows keeping the song mid-tempo, dark and ominous.
Ed Mitchell would be proud. While Ed is writing a tell-all book and whoring himself out on the reality TV circuit, Mostly Bears will be back in Tucson fighting the good fight. Ed went into rehab last winter and is sober as a judge today and there’s nothing America hates more than a quitter. Mostly Bears aren’t quitters. They expose and rebuke great American delusions with each note. They tear it all down: the innate command presence of your local state trooper, mandatory love of blood relatives, sobriety, dreams of solvency, evenly cut front lawns and the self-esteem of naïve children. By the time we reach the last track there’s nothing left but them, out in Tucson tuning up, and seething throughout the bridge of “Melancholyism”.
Paradox, A happy home
Beware: the snake is in your room
A flacid smile, To make amends
I want that big, white, picket fence
A commonwealth, The greater good
Stand up tall, girl, as you should
We're born the same! We're carved from the same!
We're born of the same And I'm bored of the same...
The record shows incredible progress over their Only Child EP from 2007. “Leda Atómica” is the sole track to make the cute for the band’s debut. As promising as Only Child was, it lacked the sneering intellectual discontent of The Ed Mitchell Clinic. Not every song here is the dark masterwork of a brooding band, but the more powerful songs like “Melancholyism,” “Digital Divide” and “Airports” serve to punctuate a greater more important goal: to make the album vital, powerful and undeniable.
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