This here is a one-man outfit. For me, making songs is like building houses. And I’m not very good with a hammer, and you might be able to tell if you’re a carpenter, but I’ll be goddamned if you can’t live in it when it’s done.

I’d like to begin by saying Black Bear is one of the most original and intellectual acts I’ve encountered in a long while. Like any other great album I’ve ever heard, this one slid almost divinely into my hands. I was immediately drawn into its electronic nature, irregular song structures and the use of an awesomely heavy and hollow bass drum, but I was hooked by the brilliant use of imagery.

Sam Beebe, the one man behind the magic, does for music what ekphrasis does for a painting. He can play the omniscient narrator or the close friend. Listening to Black Bear’s album, The Cinnamon Phase, is like secretly reading a stranger’s diary–it’s as if we were never meant to hear his thoughts.

The sonic component of this album is vast and varied. Sometimes the music is a blissful melody with Beebe singing in and out. Other times, like on “Like Venice” we are literally listening to a story, Beebe the speaker–prose the lyric. Please enjoy the album and I urge you to go out and find more about the man, whose mind is surely a rare one.

MP3: Black Bear – “I Believe in Immediacy”

 Here are some more:

MP3: Black Bear – “Like Venice”

MP3: Black Bear – “Black Bear”

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