Just a couple of months after our interview, Salt Lake City’s pop punk rockers WICKED BEARS are back with their new record “Tuning Out“, out in two days on Hidden Home Records. The record provides a tuneful, buzzing evidence of the band’s ability to shake up the well known formula and make you hooked with their cool, adventurous lyrics, explained in details below! Play two of the new tracks below and stay tuned for a full stream soon!
Catch WICKED BEARS live at the record’s release show at The Beehive Social Club in Salt Lake City on October 13th! GO HERE to see more details and RSVP and HERE to see their November shows.
2049: This song is about a time way out in the distant future, when things that bothered you thirty years ago still bother you now. It’s also about trying to accept the nature of your relationship with those things, rather than trying to escape, or change them. We wrote and named this song before the new Blade Runner movie was announced, and we can prove it.
Tuning Out: The words to Tuning Out originally sprang up from two places: the desire to use the word “fart” in a song, and the need to complain about a terrible Jimmy Fallon monologue. The song is about being fed up with the oversaturation of one’s days with stuff that doesn’t really mean anything at all. This is a great one to listen to while drinking low point beer at an Applebee’s bar by yourself.
No Vacancy: A sad, sad song about feeling lonely and without recourse, that sounds like a fun pop punk song about rental properties. Also a great one to listen to while drinking low point beer at an Applebee’s bar by yourself.
Nickel Arcade: The first line of Nickel Arcade is a variation on a line from Bob Dylan’s, “Tombstone Blues,” which is a banger about the struggle of the lower class under the oppression and the thoughtlessness of more powerful people. Nickel Arcade is a variation on that theme, told from the perspective of a nickel arcade patron who’s facing a conflict of interest. The girl in the song is based on my younger sister, who recently got her first job. If you like over reacting to feelings of helplessness, and Arrested Development references, this is the song for you.
Reebok Classics: Goblin Valley State Park in Utah is a very cool, very beautiful place, with lots of mountain ranges, campsites, and hiking trails you can really get lost in. If you ever have the privilege of hiking around Goblin Valley, don’t do it in Reebok Classics. They don’t stay on your feet, nor do they provide sufficient traction. This song is not about that, but it’s about overcoming a difficult thing you’re not prepared for, and what a relief it is when it’s over.
We Got Robbed: Our van got robbed in Berkeley while we were touring last year. We didn’t lose a ton of stuff, but it was still pretty shitty. And then someone told us not to complain about it because blah blah blah. Obviously, we had to double down on the complaining at that point, and this song is the result. We Got Robbed is for anyone who had something shitty happen, and just wanted to feel shitty about it without everybody trying to tell them how to fix it, or how they should feel about it.
Cameron: We rehearse in a big storage facility with a bunch of other bands, and an inordinate amount of them play metal of some form or fashion. Cameron is our attempt to appeal to those people, to understand and sympathize with them, because their seemingly narrow taste and sick riffs confound us.
60 WPM: What’s Cher’s real name? Do museums have places for overnight employees to sleep? What does it mean to feel like “butt”? At least one of these questions is answered in this stream-of-consciousness mumbler. This is what happens when you’re stuck in traffic for forty five minutes on the way home from work. Listen to this song when it’s 11:00 at night and your boss still won’t let you leave because it’s busy.
Chattering Teeth: Have you ever seen one of those bulk order magazines they used to make, where you could flip through pictures and descriptions of different party gags and trinkets, and then call the number on the back to order them in sets of one to a thousand? I imagine the protagonist of this song has recently made an order through one of these magazines, and as they’re opening their package, the contents within come to life! Hello, Chattering Teeth! Hello, Talking Fish! Mr. Fish, you have a great singing voi- OW! My toe! What the fudge, Chattering Teeth!?
Mega Powers:A song about drinking too much of whatever was in that barrel Dumbo and Timothy Mouse drank out of during that scene from Disney’s 1941 feature film, “Dumbo.”
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