slumberland records

Pop Matters web site

Every band must have a beginning, where everything's open and it's all about finding your sound. In the Beginning documents the beginning for 14 Iced Bears, a unique UK pop-rock group which released its debut album in 1988, its second album in 1991, and broke up in 1992. This release is the story of what happened before the first album, from the band's formation in 1985 to its first album. That story is told through two tracks from their first demo recordings, three singles, two Peel sessions and a few live tracks. All of those tracks are previously unreleased except for the three singles (the first two were released on Frank, the third on the now-widely loved label Sarah).

Four "phases" of the band existed during the three years that In the Beginning covers; 9 people play at various times on these recordings, yet two stay the same, guitarist Kevin Canham and the group's lead singer/guitarist/songwriter, Robert Sekula. No matter what lineup changes the band went through, its sound stayed chiefly the same. 14 Iced Bears played super-melodic pop-rock which had both the childlike giddy eccentricity of their contemporaries the Pastels (not to mention all sorts of later groups, particularly Beat Happening and much of the K Records roster) and the dirty guitar-rock of the Velvet Underground. That latter side of their music led to everything being soaked in fuzz, giving their songs an gloriously noisy sheen that sounds utterly romantic to kids weaned on punk rock and its offshoots.

14 Iced Bears' songs alternate between straightforward, catchy pop and more obtuse post-punk-ish art songs. That duality is immediately apparent on In the Beginning, with the first two songs on the band's first single -- the musically gleeful pop of "Inside" and the more complicated rock arrangements on "Blue Suit." 14 Iced Bears' lyrical side is persistently multi-faced as well, shifting between enigmatic poetry and straight-from-the-heart raw expressions of love, jealousy, confusion and longing.

The more heart wrenching side of 14 Iced Bears is best capsulated on "Balloon Song," their second single and a song that no doubt helped give them a following. It appears twice here, in studio and Peel session versions, and it could easily have been here a few more times without me minding. It's both a truly perfect pop song, with a super glue hook and gorgeous singing, and a heartbreaking portrait of sad love. The chorus is worded just right, with word building upon word until it hits the right bittersweet note: "Don't call me ever again / I think I've lost my only friend/a friend that happened to say that she loved me."

Catching up with the past can be a sublime pleasure. It's impossible for even the most crazed music nerd to keep up with everything going on now and everything that happened in the past. That makes a release like In the Beginning such a treat. It serves the dual purpose of supplying fans with a nice gift while introducing newcomers to a truly remarkable band.

- Dave Heaton

Indiepages.com

Yet another reissue of a band from the late 80s (which is a trend I fully support!), this one is of the often underrated 14 Iced Bears. Even if you have their Precision lp, which is a collection of their early singles, you still need this, as it takes their first three singles on Frank and Sarah Records, adds two complete Peel sessions, two live songs from '86, and two early demos from '85, for a total of 22 tracks - 12 of them previously unreleased! Not many have heard this band, but they're noisy pop a la the Pastels, a male-led Shop Assistants or even early Jesus And Mary Chain at times (the Bears can sometimes get noisy). They write super catchy pop songs, and of course have a very jangly guitar sound. The Aislers Set gave them a bit of exposure lately, due to their cover of "Balloon Song" on their most recent album. This record is just chock full o' classics that I hadn't heard in a while, like "Inside", "Like A Dolphin", "Balloon Song", and "Sure To See", and the new songs are great to hear, too! I would've enjoyed a bit of reading material in the booklet, though…

- Chris McFarlane

Tangents.co.uk

**Blue Waves That Spill There'd been blizzards all day, driving snow in huge flakes tumbling from heavy skies, carpeting the mountains in luxurious white that would sparkle painfully in the sharp sunlight of the next morning, but for then just a wall of speckling oblivion, as winds buffeted and harangued our car. Winter. Highland winter, just on the cusp of Glen Coe, its towering faces scowling upon the valley floor, eerily still so black despite the snow, the mountains blocking out any light and casting shadows of historic sadness and foreboding.

We had a small hotel room looking out at the mass of the western sentinel of Aonach Eagach groaning through the mist across the chopping water of Loch Leven, just beginning to turn silver as the sun departed once more and the moon tugged the tides in their ebb and flow with its silken tendrils. And I was alone.

Alone standing gazing out on a Scotland I'd ignored for so long and strangely longed to explore more; to discover its legends, horrors and beauties. I stood on a tiny wooden balcony and looked east into the gaping mouth of the glen. West out down the loch towards the chopping Atlantic, whipped to a frenzy by waves of snow storms streaming from the barren northern wastes. Collar turned up, attempts to cheat the wind with hands dug deep into pockets and shoulders hunched over. Cold but stupidly happy. Ilooked south into the blank face of the mountain with a coin moon eye refracting on the sliced waters, piercing me with shards of diamond. We kissed heavens, me and her.

Presently I turned back into the warmth and lay myself across the bed, severed by the white blade of moonlight that penetrated the room. Hard shadows cast unflinching upon walls stood proud, a defiance written in light. Eyes closed.

The corner of the room was another snowstorm. A blank television screen crackled uncertain oblivion, trapped between channels. Perhaps I was punishing it. Perhaps I was its saviour. The pattern of speckles on the floor hypnotised as I gazed at its regular fractious myriad of white. My eyes burned into black. The world was spinning below me. And through it all of course, was a music. The tremulous pulse of 14 Iced Bears providing a soundtrack made in some kind of a heaven for a spilt second of my life remembered forever.

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McCarthy once (not very) famously sang that 'the '80s was an evil time' and up to a point they were right of course. McCarthy wrote great songs that pushed and pulled at the fabric of society in the 1980s, made a Pop that was barbed with wit and wisdom; a Pop that made political comments, no less. It seems strange listening to their records again now. They still sound like great songs, but the urgency is lost... the meaning seems to have slipped, seems less relevant. Perhaps this is just because I am no longer a teenager, am no longer a young twenty-something with 'issues'; am no longer someone seeking an identity and making allegiances based on idealistic, political persuasions. And then again, perhaps not. In fact I feel less sure of my identity now than ever I did; feel less focused on what matters and what does not. I think I still feel as strongly about the issues I did when I was twenty, but then the world and society all seems so fluid, so vague that I really can't tell anymore. Perhaps this is what it means to be living in a post-structuralist world, a post-political world where there is no right or left but only a sludge filled river of middle-ground compromise. Where in fact that river is polluted by globalised hyper-capitalism, and when we talk about post-politics we really admit that politics has failed and that only commerce matters. We admit that where human nature is concerned, greed will triumph over all else.

Or maybe I'm just too comfortable.

Strangely these days I find myself almost longing for the return of the 1980s. I find myself wishing for a time when I knew what I loved and what I hated. I find myself longing for a society where against the dominant culture of confidence and arrogant smugness there was (apparently) one of nervous energy, one of peculiarly strong self-doubt. I don't see that anymore... which is maybe good or bad, you can decide for yourself. For me though, the culture of smug confidence we currently have can only be a bad thing.

Or am I just wallowing in the stupid romantic image of fabulous failure? Am I just admitting that I love frailty more than strength? Is it just a question of fashion?

It's probably a question of fashion.

I wrote the words at the start of this piece in 1988, at a time when it seemed as though Brighton's 14 Iced Bears captured that sense of fabulous romantic failure better than anyone. Their eponymous debut LP of that year was full of neuveau-psychedelia that at its best soared monumentally to the stars. Not that many people noticed of course, because in terms of fashion 14 Iced Bears seemed about as unfashionable as it got.

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One of the most annoying and most appealing aspects of the 1980's 'independent' / 'alternative' UK culture was its absolute inability to come together into unified cohesion. Fractured into numerous sub-genres, each select clique would fiercely defend its position and deny any possible connection to others. It all made for a selection of impossibly glamorous (in an non-gloss way of course) storefronts to rooms of grimy insignificance.

Hence, 14 Iced Bears were seen in a dim light by those who followed, say, the early Primal Scream with their terse jangle psychedelia, or Loop with their blasted, burnt out sun spiral noise, although really they made records as good if not better than either.

The early 14 Iced Bears records were a racket; the sounds of people trying to make sense of the world and seeing no sense in that world and so inventing one for themselves. And what they made was a world of post-punk Pop Noise that at its finest ('Balloon Song' and 'Like A Dolphin' from their second single, and more than anything else the wonderful 'Cut' from their first) was a world to cherish. It seemed natural that 14 Iced Bears should release a single on Sarah records because Sarah Records was about as unfashionable as you got at the tail of the '80s also. Continually mocked in the UK rock press for their supposedly fey ways, Sarah put out the Bears' third single in 1988. 'Unhappy Days' and 'Come Get Me' were terrific blasts of exuberant Pop, but 'Sure To See' was the song that really counted. A slow burn of a song, 'Sure To See' was midday on top of the castle, staring at the sun and feeling your retina whiten. Perfect summer Pop.

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And really 14 Iced Bears were always at their finest when they were slowed down to a crawl, as they showed on the highlights of their eponymous debut album. 'Moths' and 'Hay Fever' for example were blissful meanders along the sands at midnight low tide, whilst the trilogy of 'Dust Remains', a re-recorded 'Cut' and 'Surfacer' that closed the record were astonishing arcs into the stratosphere, made all the more real by the edgy playing. 14 Iced Bears always sounded like a bunch of ragged minstrels desperate to leave the planet; if Loop could effortlessly ascend to the heavens with a profound darkness of soul, then 14 Iced Bears reminded you that you were human, told you that those aches inside were for real. That the welts on your heart were more intense, held more potential for release and true escape than that dense blankness.

Of course again no one noticed, or so it seemed at the time at least. Time passes on however, and either new generations, or the same old ones who maybe mislaid their records seem intent on digging out old tunes and even on re-interpreting them. San Francisco's' finest Aislers Set covered the 14 Iced Bears 'Balloon Song' on last years' amazing The Last Match album, and the ever-wonderful Slumberland Records is in the process of releasing a 14 Iced Bears compilation that collects those early singles, plus John Peel Session recordings, a couple of live tracks and some frankly forgettable demos onto the accurately titled In The Beginning. It's a shame that the CD cuts the story off just when it got really interesting, but with the continued availability of the 1999 Overground compilation Let the Breeze Open Our Hearts, which collects the debut album tracks, then that's fair enough.

- Alistair Fitchett

Think Small

De jaren '80 zijn weer helemaal in. En dat houdt niet alleen in dat New Order plots weer heel hip is en ieder zichzelf respecteren jeugdhonk Eighties Parties organiseert. Ook raken door middel van rereleases diverse onbekendere jaren '80 bands uit de vergetelheid. Zo bracht Slumberland (dat tegenwoordig- hoera hoera - ook weer steeds meer uitbrengt) deze verzamel-CD uit met drie singles en een twaalftal niet eerder uitgebracht opnamen van de mij tot nog toe onbekende 14 Iced Bears (uit Brighton, Engeland, ze bestonden van 1985 tot 1988). Hoewel de vergelijking chronologisch gezien wat vreemd is, doet het met sterk denken aan Henry's Dress en The Aislers Set (de laatsten coverden 14 Iced Bears' Balloon Song op hun tweede album). Die maken ook van die leuke indiemodnoisepop-liedjes, vaak lekker kort maar oh zo leuk Het verschil met deze bands is dat 14 Iced Bears toch wat meer jaren '80 'klinkt' (het heeft soms wat weg van The Field Mice of vroege My Bloody Valentine) maar een grote overeenkomst is gelukkig dat ook 14 Iced Bears een hele goede plaat heeft afgeleverd, die tot de allerbeste (re)releases van 2001 behoort. Deze plaat maakt erg benieuwd, niet alleen naar ander werk van 14 Iced Bears, maar ook naar andere allang vergeten bands uit dezelfde periode.

- Martijn Grooten