Review:'Wojtek The Bear' 'I Don't Think You Want to Hear This'
- Label: 'Last Night From Glasgow'
- Genre: 'Pop'
- Release Date: '22.5.26.'
Our Rating:
I Don't Think You Want To Hear this is the latest album, that you really need to hear, by Scottish chamber pop indie band Wojtek The Bear who are Becky, Chuck, Paul, Scott and Tam. The album was recorded at Beetroot Studios In Airdrie with Bill Ryder-Jones producing and Stuart MacLeod engineering.
The album opens with Kylie's Put A Curse On Us or at least that's what they think, because she won't reply to their letters, sophisticated chamber pop with gentle Scottish burr vocals, make it seem like it has intoxicated them and made them love her all the more, hex or no hex.
The Only Way is about finding understanding without having to dive too deep, slow strings and brushed drums drawing you deeper into their world. Speed Equals distance and other queries you may have about braking distances that have appalled you, about how things have gone between you, baleful strings and intricate guitar pattern mark out the equation perfectly.
French Blue isn't about any recreations of Yves Klein Blue that might have been re-gendered, this has sad regrets for everything that tore them apart, he won't tell you all his faults, but they are endless, so I guess it's all his fault anyway.
Death Of The High Street asks why they have so many bookies and charity shops, rather than the grocers and butchers they might prefer, where has Dolcis and HMV gone too, they want to go back to the halcyon days of a real High Street, the crystalline harmonies and strings make this a most poignant elegy for a lost way of life.
Taking Shortcuts has sun dappled guitar being carefully picked, while they dive down alleys and find other ways of taking Shortcuts in everything they do, well apart from writing an album with AI obviously.
Fly In Amber is about the joy they feel for the woman who is in love with the past, how much she enjoys finding pieces of Amber with Fly's captured for eternity within. Lie Of The Land has a bucolic chamber country edge, to this tale of realizing that for many folks, as long as something makes them money then it's worth doing, along with questions to why you stuck with your teenage love.
Regrets they have a few, but it isn't about the beauty of the music they create, this is another sublimely pretty tune, with darker lyrical content, with a cryptic message or two for the events you might have the odd Regrets about.
Stitch The Clouds is for someone who wishes to be an astronaut and go on one of the current trips to the moon and maybe beyond, this has a gentle wistful edge with the supple brass section bringing everything together. The album closes with the slow brittle sounds of Glass Jaws that has them returning from space over a simple piano motif and sparse guitar.
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