Pitchfork

After a handful of steady LPs and EPs, it seemed as if Minus the Bear are ready to come into their own and make their masterpiece, or take a chance or two and produce a true abomination. Planet of Ice is neither mission statement nor monstrosity. That's disappointing, in a way: The Seattle band might have released something awful instead of this exercise in competency. They have the potential to make some interesting mistakes, and a weighed risk might have produced something amazing. Instead Planet of Ice is better than its predecessor, Menos el Oso, but only slightly so.

Let the title fool you: The most striking thing here is how serious the band has become since its days of song titles such as "Thanks for the Killer Game of Crisco® Twister". They're still likable guys, but they've gone moody. The tone is ominous, particularl "Burying the Luck", when Jake Snider sings about feverish dreams and ends on foreboding questions ("Will his hands know what mine did?/ Will your body like the fit?"). Words like these need tension. The band responds with athletic arrangements that mimic the first-person action. On love/sex song "White Mystery", guitars crash around the line "lay under bright lights," announcing release to the song's sexual encounter, breaking from quieter passages of observation.

The title "Part 2" seems like it's announcing a clear break in the album, but it's a red herring and doesn't mark any thematic or sonic turns. Instead, Minus the Bear sound adrift, in a good way-- their directionlessness opens some much-needed breathing room. On an album that's too on-message, "Part 2"'s instrumental swathes expand and contract just right. They return to the program on "Throwing Shapes", though Alex Rose wedges some bubbly, squirming synthesizer into their full instrumental mix. Here Snider sings about a girl getting more "passionate," but he doesn't inject any of his own passion here, or anywhere else, really. His voice is smooth but bland, covering the already-slick production with an impenetrable patina that closes off the song to the possibility of the sort of emotional resonance that they want to make. Snider should steel his jaw a little more, or maybe loosen it. These are funny guys, and that shouldn't be sacrificed for "growth" or "maturity." "I'm becoming a casual business man/ On matters of the heart," he intones on "Dr. L'Ling". He could have just as easily said "scientist"-- some of the encounters on Planet of Ice are written in second person, but even in first person these mathematical songs feel detached and observational.

Is this what they want? On "Ice Monster", Snider sings about craving "safety" so he can stop "knocking on wood." Then the track demonstrates so: The band tries to slip into prog territory, but it never sacrifices musicality for technical display, and its melodies stay intact. But even on this side of prog, those passages can feel inhibited, modulating aimlessly and petering out. It's on this song that their sense of humor disappears most completely, and the song's two second-handclap part (the one part that sounds like it was made by humans) is too good and over too fast. Next time Minus the Bear should rely less on safety, more on fortune.