There are few bands I am willing to drive three hours for, but Minus the Bear is one of them.

Facing situations where you invest copious amounts of time, effort, and gas money into making it out to see a band can always lead to the prospect of diminished returns.  Inevitably, if you’re not careful, you’ll focus more on the effort it took to get to the show and how disappointed you might be if the show doesn’t live up to your now-impossible expectations.  Fortunately, once Minus the Bear came onstage to the clipped sounds of “Knights” from 2007’s Planet of Ice, all those silly notions melted away.

Before Minus the Bear showed up, though, two other bands had the stage.  I’ll reserve judgment on The Constellations, a psych-rock band from Atlanta, GA, as I only caught their final song—a lengthy, frantic, number with plenty of fuzz bass.  All I will say is that they may have done the next band, Skysaw, a disservice.  Because their energy was through the roof (even though it was only 9PM), it took a bit of time to warm up to Skysaw’s more-introspective, layered tunes after witnessing the equivalent of the MC5 on speed.

I assume Skysaw takes their name from the Brian Eno song of the same name, because, like Eno, their music is full of tension, yet melody.  And, like Eno, they know the importance of texture.  Singer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Reina’s voice comes out like a mixture of Ted Leo and Peter Gabriel—a forceful tenor able to capture a melody and make it his own.  Skysaw’s drummer is none other than Jimmy Chamberlin, formerly of Smashing Pumpkins—a fact I found out only a day before the show. As always, his style is tight and rapid-fire, but oddly enough, a bit understated.  As it turns out, Skysaw was originally Chamberlin’s outlet for some of his new musical ideas post-Smashing Pumpkins, and Reina worked with Chamberlin to flesh out the ideas along with the other band members.  But Skysaw aren’t the single vision of anyone, as it’s clear that the band is well-rehearsed and embodies a symphonic space all their own.  I’m anxious to hear more from them in the future.

As for the main act, I’ll say that Minus the Bear are consummate musicians, every one of them.  And nowhere is this more on display than in a live setting.  You can gather a sense of their instrumental prowess on nearly all their records, but to see them pull of tightly wound songs like “Thanks for the Killer Game of Crisco Twister” and “Drilling” flawlessly onstage is a bit awe-inducing.  The 90 minute show leaned heavily on material from their latest release, Omni, an album I, truthfully, found a little stale.  But the songs from Omni—“My Time,” “Summer Angel,” and “Into the Mirror,” especially—find new life once their charged with the band’s manic sense of energy and charisma.  “Hold Me Down,” with its crunchy, inverted Led Zeppelin riff, benefitted most from the live treatment, while an outtake from Omni, “Broken China,” (released on the free six-song EP available at the band’s website) alluded to some of the heavier tracks that get left behind from Omni.

Minus the Bear navigate a tricky landscape—a prog-based, indie band from Seattle, the onetime home of angst and current home of many folk revivalists (e.g., Fleet Foxes)—but what works for them, live and on tape, is their ability to transcend expectations and defy genre.  Each LP has its own sound and thematic niches, from the angular grips of Highly Refined Pirates to the sonic distance on Planet of Ice, but live all the songs coalesce into a powerful expression of the band’s finest abilities: a sickly tight rhythm section, guitar insanity, and hook-filled verses that lead to hook-filled choruses.  And to hear them close out the night with an older song from 2002’s Highly Refined Pirates, “Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse,” demonstrates that they are not a band who considers their early efforts to be part of a learning curve or dismisses older songs as unimportant compared to new material.  And that’s a quality I truly appreciate from a band that’s been together for over a decade.

As a concert-goer, it’s such a pleasure to see a well-rehearsed band in an intimate venue who understand the dynamic of a live setting.  Minus the Bear are easy to appreciate on record; live, they are nearly impossible not to admire and enjoy—the ultimate goal of a live show.