Hard Times

Hard Times, the first U.S. release (and third album) from Victoria, Bes Himalayan Bear, exhibits an indisputable level of ingenuity, a fetish for reverb and a voice that is as delicate as it is potent. Lead singer Ryan Beattie may be best known as the front man of Chet or the guitarist of Frog Eyes, but he started making records in his early teens and has amassed a large catalog over the nearly two decades since. It's his solo project Himalayan Bear which best shows his inimitable talent and remarkable voice, and Hard Times is his finest effort to date.

The listener is given full allowance to bear witness to sounds that may resemble the slow jubilation of a lazy tropical contentment or a foreboding acceptance of a hypothermic state where the brain tells a freezing body that everything is just fine. This is the true power of Beattie's words and arrangements, his merits lie solely in his restraint, wavering on a threshold that can lift the heart one minute only to break it the next. Hard Times is a stunning album, a modern take on the old crooners of the 1950's, a strange blue light cast on records played in the dark, a blood stain on a poodle skirt, evocative but clearly not nostalgic. Beattie finds the hollows of our hearts and fills them with sound.