Music Review // Fake Shape "Black Bear"

Right away, Fake Shape start with this serious rock sound.  It feels acoustic and dreamy, though it is electric.  Artists like Death Cab For Cutie and Modest Mouse come to mind at first.  This song doesn't really have a verse/chorus/verse structure either, as it feels like it's set more in three parts.   The first part is with lyrics and it feels like that could take us into a more traditional song but it doesn't.

Not quite halfway through the song, we drift off into this sweet guitar riff.  This shows the big rock sound of the band, the soul like The Black Keys or someone similar.   While it feels like this might come back to the chorus it instead drifts even further out into what I believe to be a trumpet giving a solo performance.   This mood seems to take us into the desert as well, a little bit like Fastball or Beck.

This instrumental middle, which is exceptionally good, then slows down into this sneaky bass line.  At this point, it we creep back into what the sound at the beginning was like and the third part of this song also has the return of the vocals.   With the way this middle part goes, this song definitely feels as if it has more music than it does lyrics.

If this song was constructed in a verse/chorus/verse style and the middle of it was shortened or taken out, I think the song would have a lot of qualities of other bands out there today.   It would by no means be a bad song, but it would just sound like other artists.  The journey which "Black Bear" takes you on is what makes this song so great and what makes Fake Shape such a talented artist.