The 2 Bears – Be Strong

The 2 Bears - Be Strong

By Jim Merrett

A GSOH might be a prerequisite for a lonely-hearts ad, but in the music industry it won’t get you very far. Everyone wants to be taken seriously, so a po-face, skinny jeans and stick-on council estate accent is in, a bear suit is definitely out.

But if there’s one music genre that knows how to have a good time, it’s dance. And of course this arena is not alien to novelty either. No doubt thanks to the availability of cheap drugs, we’ve embraced robots (Daft Punk) and a man with a massive mouse head (deadmau5), now with a typically British low-rent, half-hearted Carry On spirit the 2 Bears lumber into a club near you.

With Hot Chip rumoured to be winding down ahead of their forthcoming album release, and following the stratospheric high of last year’s ‘Gabriel’, we find chunky songsmith Joe Goddard in fine fettle. Here he’s roped in DJ buddy Raf Rundel  (the project was comically to be called the 3 Bears until Metronomy’s Joe Mount pulled out) for a teddy bears’ piss up. Indeed, if there was a club somewhere called “The Woods”, then this pair would not only go out of their way to do their shit in it, they’d slap up posters boasting “If you go down to The Woods today…” (blissful opener ‘Birds And The Bees’ even melts into a music box rendition of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’) the bear-related pun are at times stretched further than a hammock given the task of holding up the two aforementioned bears.

The obvious link between house music and gay culture make their moniker even more fitting, although when the pilled-up duo aren’t indiscriminately putting their paws around anything that moves (the burbling ‘Bear Hug’), they seem to have an eye for the ladies. Be Strong goes a long way to affirm that the giddy beat that kept Hot Chip in line wasn’t just a sideways glance at the dancefloor but came from the heart. And nowhere is Goddard’s day job more obvious (fittingly) than recent single ‘Work’.

But it’s not all paw-on-the-floor (sorry), with a nod to Ian Dury in ‘Time In Mind’ and a ska-tinge to ‘Heart Of The Congos’. And while nothing might touch the celestial ‘Gabriel’, there are moments that come close, notably epic sentiment-crammed closer ‘Church’, which marries Hammond throbs to calypso drums, wind chimes and chirpy gospel for a suitably upbeat – spiritual, even – send off.

This chunk of rave revivalism (ravivalism?) might just be an excuse to get into all those clubs that might not otherwise let them in the door, but it makes for a very likeable album, even once the novelty wears thin. The bears play it well: not too serious, not too camp – just right.

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