BEAR HANDS

Bear Hands' fifth LP 'The Key to What' ain't no act of desperation! They didn't have to make another record. You didn't ask for one. However, after moving to a tiny town on the Oregon coast in 2019, singer/songwriter Dylan Rau didn't have much else to do. He chopped some wood and learned how to use power tools, but these proved to be passing fancies, the adopted passions of a five-year LARP as a different person.

I don't really know how to stop writing songs. Even if no one is listening or we have no team or infrastructure supporting us, I like to think we'd be like those graffiti artists who paint in the subway tunnels where no one will ever see it.

Narcotics Anonymous tells us, "To thine own self be true." But they also tell you pure virginal abstinence is the only way to live. Neither of these dictums helped Rau find meaning or purpose during his extended exile in ruraldom. On the plus side, he wrote a couple of songs, some of which turned out pretty good, some tickling the underside of transcendence.

The record is mostly about trying to keep it together when it's already fallen apart, learning skills that no longer have any applications today and true and total pointlessness. Kinda like singing into the void to see if we hear anything back, but your headphones no longer connect because the void updated it's hardware and doesn't have an aux jack anymore.