Taipei indie rockers Bearbabes (熊寶貝樂團), who perform tomorrow night at Witch House (女巫店), sound remarkably fresh for a band that was formed in 2000.
The group, started by university classmates guitarist Wei Jun (魏駿) and female singer and bassist Cookie Chang (張嘉桁), has progressed at a relatively slow pace, having released its second full-length CD, Year After Year (年年), just last year.
But taking their time has worked well for the Bearbabes, who have crafted a solid, mature sound that draws inspiration from American alt-country, indie pop and post-rock.
Photo courtesy of Bearbabes
And the group is certainly not short on fans, having first gained exposure with the college crowd as a runner-up at the Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival’s (貢寮國際海洋音樂祭) annual battle of the bands in 2004.
The band has also been a major draw at indie rock events and venues large and small, from the Simple Life Music Festival (簡單生活節) and its 10,000-plus crowds to The Mercury in Kaohsiung, whose owner, Don Quan (關奕威), says the Bearbabes attracted the club’s biggest audience of last year.
One of the Bearbabes’ past problems is a common one among aspiring indie bands: compulsory military service for Taiwanese males, which until recently lasted nearly two years.
“Military service held us up for quite a while,” said Chang, who noted that the band’s first album, 03:53, didn’t come out until 2006.
The Bearbabes, who have gone through several second guitarists and three different drummers for either family or health reasons, had to wait for Wei to finish his service.
Inconveniences aside, Chang says losing a band member is “like losing a friend.”
That feeling, as well as the death of her father in between albums, influenced her songwriting on Year After Year.
“It was a way of reconciling [those feelings],” she said. “But when writing the songs, it wasn’t a way of venting. It wasn’t like I was angry and asking, ‘Why did things turn out this way?’ Rather, it was using a plain and simple way to write out my thoughts and feelings.”
Chang says Firefly (螢火), a dreamy piano ballad that is one of the album’s more beautiful tracks, directly addresses losing a loved one, while Crossing the Border (過境) articulated her state of mind at the time “very clearly.”
The latter is an epic closer to Year After Year and begins with a sparse acoustic arrangement and elegiac-sounding harmonies from Chang. After she sings the line “I want to be rid of all the things that tied me down/what you yearned for/but I’m usually alone/facing my disheartened self” (想拋開所有的束縛對你渴望/但我通常只是一個人/面對自己的沮喪), the band ends with a drawn-out, noise-laden jam.
“It was a little like healing myself,” Chang said of making the album. “Of course I hope that when other people listen to [our songs], they can also get that feeling.”
Space is limited at Witch House, so expect a queue outside. The venue advises audience members to arrive by 9pm.
The Bearbabes also perform at the Pier 2 Art District (高雄駁二藝術特區) in Kaohsiung on Feb. 12.
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