“I’m not strong, I’m just alive when I shouldn’t be.” So opens Unravel, the latest album from Olympia‘s Guidon Bear on Antiquated Future. Led by Mary Water (Little Red Car Wreck) along with drummer/multi-instrumentalist Pat Maley (Lois, Courtney Love) and synth-player E. Michael Bradley, the project first won our back in 2019 with debut album Downwardly Mobile: Steel Accelerator, a record the label described as one of “infectious and subtly complex pop songs about real-life nightmares, boot camps, late bills, and scraping by.” But if that release concerned struggling through, Unravel challenges the heroism too often misapplied to such experiences, refusing to subscribe to the idea there’s anything noble about suffering. “I’m not a part of your cult of positivity,” as Water continues on ‘Legoset Life’. “I’m not strong, so please stop saying it.”
The opener sets the tone for Unravel, an album populated by what Antiquated Future call “songs about wanting to give up (but then deciding not to give up).” Striving forward not out of some misplaced romanticism but the mundane and often painful process of simply continuing on. This might register as a downbeat mood, with songs like ‘Attic Realm’ creeping with the slow discomfort of everyday life, Water’s lyrics playing like some dispatch from the edge of things, a view of the world offered from an odd angle. But other songs, such as striking single ‘Neowise’, glow with glimmering brightness, tapping into the ancient and the sublime as a mode through which human connection might be found. It tells the story of a rare celestial event, of coming together as a group to turn off the bright light and noise of the day-to-day in order to experience something bigger, something almost magical.
there’s a comet coming to us
every 6,800 years
in Belarus now, in Algeria, in Mexico
her bright ballpoint light appears
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The diversity of tones continues across the record. ‘Mountain’ is charged with a bristling energy, the promises of the lyrics delivered in a tone which could be sardonic or genuine hope, while ‘Lessons’ offers a more reflective air, its bright warmth grasping for fond memories within a difficult present. “But I’ve had some good times,” Water sings, “and I admire / how you ride your bike in the night / in your rain pants and your black boots and the moon so bright.” Likewise, ‘Your Apartment’ opts for a slow burning momentum, its weight building with every passing line but never quite tipping into the promised storm, while ‘Fund Ppl Without Weapons’ is far calmer, clear in its intentions (a simple repeated chorus of “defund the police” capturing its anti-facist, anti-white supremacist, pro-community message).
But no matter the sound or style, each of the tracks are bound by Water’s idiosyncratic observations and compassion in the face of our often troubling modern world. ‘Spiders’ is a good example, a song full of dark paths and deep water, a place to lose yourself, hide yourself, to perhaps never quite find your way out of. But it also holds a metaphor for Unravel as a whole. “I’m sure every spider on this short trail spent all day spinning webs just so when I crash through them I know they exist,” Waters sings in the chorus. Perhaps, in a world that can feel dark and vast and dislocated, all any creature can do is continue to build the small things they are able to, whether it brings them comfort or joy or simple distraction, just to prove they are still alive. “I’m sure every spider on this short trail,” Waters continues in the chorus’ second half, “spent all day spinning webs just so when I crash through them I know they persist.”
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Unravel is out now via Antiquated Future and available from the Guidon Bear Bandcamp page.
