Featuring ex-members of Sharks Keep Moving (vocalist and guitar player Jake Snider), Kill Sadie (drummer Erin Tate), and progressive metal giants Botch (lead guitar player Dave Knudson), in addition to a sought-after producer (Matt Bayles, who has worked with the likes of Isis, Mastodon, Norma Jean and Pearl Jam), Minus the Bear had many of their connections made and many of their dues paid before forming as a side-project, recording a record, and playing their first show (in that order) in 2001.

Partly out of circumstance and partly out of the realization that playing together was too fun to approach half-heartedly, Minus the Bear quickly became the main focus for all members. Their diverse influences float their dreamy, nostalgic sound on a buoyant originality that helps to separate them from the rest of the blindingly blase indy-rock world. "All the bands I've been in, and that all the guys have been in, have done stuff that's not necessarily traditional music," Snider told me over the phone from Seattle. "We don't really know how to write music that's typical, I don't think."

This has become more apparent than ever on Minus the Bear?s latest release, the somewhat self-titled "Menos El Oso". Probably their most adventurous album to date, Menos El Oso plays with the moments of melodic fluidity that have hallmarked the band's previous releases by adopting a perhaps more jarring, but not more aggressive, sound that demonstrates their concern for creativity. "I don't think you're going to hear the same record out of us twice," Jake commented when asked about the development of Menos el Oso from previous albums. "This record is just an expression of us having a little bit more fun with it," he added.

Having fun with it has been a both blessing and a curse for Minus the Bear. Fans find fantastic familiarity in Jake's dreamy tales of drinks and dames, whereas some critics dismiss the band as simple and immature. Suicide Squeeze, Minus the Bear's Seattle based label, is pushing Menos El Oso as an album that demonstrates the band's developing maturity and depth. Minus the Bear's days of "songs about drinking and girls" are done and gone, reports the band's profile write-up, "instead replaced by tales of money as metaphor, stripped innocence and lovelorn remembrance."

"We get nailed with this thing: 'Oh, they only sing about drinking and chicks,'" Jake explained, "but in the indy-rock world there are tons of songs about drinking and chicks, I don't think that's necessarily immature. I still like the lyrics that I've written on the old records and I think people aren't really 'getting' what I'm trying to say, and that's my failure as a writer too." But the songwriting doesn't lie entirely on Jake's shoulders; Dave Knudson is responsible for Minus the Bear's distinct guitar intricacies around which the band's songs are communally built.

Album production has become a communal process for the band as well; the entire band is credited for production on Menos El Oso whereas Matt Bayles had been largely in charge on previous releases, excepting "Highly Refined Pirates", Minus the Bear's first full-length, which was produced by Steve Fisk. "Dave usually comes up with the genesis of a song, but we're used to working collaboratively on the music, and so the transition from writing into recording [with an ensemble production] is almost seamless." As such, Minus the Bear has been able to shape their latest release to their exact specifications and work free from the outside influence of a producer.

Check out Minus the Bear at the Croation Cultural Center alongside Thursday, We're All Broken, and The Number 12 Looks Like You, and, most likely, a bunch of high-school girls.