Brissy based alt/ garage rock crew The Bear Hunt recently released their debut album titled To Be Honest, and to be honest it’s one of the most gut punchingly impress rock record we’ve heard this second half of 2015.

Recorded at Red Hill’s legendary Foundry, by TS Predator and mastered by Bryce Moorhead, (producer of Violent Soho’s legendary Hungry Ghosts), this new records, To Be Honest is The Bear Hunt ripe with melancholy, stoner grooves and head thrashing rock riffs.

In celebration of the record, the band have kindly given as a track by track run down of the record which you can check out below. Check out the record below and if you like what you’re hearing pop by the band’s Facebook page for more info.

Trigger

This is one of our first songs we wrote and one of our slower numbers. This was written in Townsville after a night out on Flinders Street. It’s a reflection of the interactions of party goers and the authorities. There’s always guaranteed issues between bouncers/police and partiers. Sometimes the party goers are pissed, arrogant and are out to ruin some poor guy’s night and sometimes life. Often the authorities have their heads so far up their own arses and high on power they’re the first to cause conflict.

Ready Or Not

Our “summer smash hit” is what we like to call this one. It’s our passive-aggressive power pop song.

Lost Reality

This was written after a few nasty fights with a couple of people close to me within a short period. Like the track, the time was chaotic and destructive to the relationships and to myself. For a track with aggressive undertones we tried to give it a bit of a boppy groove.

Angry Cuntry:

Lloyd came up with the main riff. It’s basically a piss take country song. It’s another track with self-destructive motives through the lyrics. But I swear we’re quite a happy lot in real life!

Vanish

We wrote this song straight after Abbott won the election late 2013. To say the least we were pretty disappointed with the result. Disappointed with the voting public and the government overall. It’s basically about the disillusionment and ignorance of the Australian public and exploring an alternative way of viewing society. Both Bryce Moorhead and Steve Palmer did an especially brilliant job on the mixing and mastering of this particular track.

Stars

Stars is another track that was written after some people watching and observations of general society. The lyrics were actually written on a ferry ride at dusk from Magnetic Island (near Townsville). It was written with an environmental warrior mentality. The idea that there is a small battle happening between the apathetic and the socially aware about our environment.

Can’t Save You

This punky pop number was written with my brother in mind as a 17 year old. The vocals took a couple of takes and were pretty raw, brutal and emotional.

Tropical

When we first starting gigging we played in a small 10×6 room or thereabouts called The Cot in North Queensland. You would only need to play two tracks and already be completely drenched in sweat. “Tropical” is one of our favourite songs that we played in The Cot.

The song was written in spite of the humidity and hot weather which can literally make you hot headed and irrational. Air conditioning is an absolute life saver.

Movie Star

The meaning of this song had been kept a mystery for a while since it comes from a friend’s untasteful personal story. He told us a particular story about him staying in a remote town in the Northern Territory and hooking up with a local girl. They got intimate in a truck yard along with some small grimy details.

The following day he felt shamed by those small grimy details and hid at the local, a place where aboriginals cannot enter without permission still to this day!! She spotted him from outside later that day and called him out. Her famous last lines were “Last night you loved me like am movie star, today you don’t even want to know me.” A story that left us with a lot of questions…

Whore

I wrote the lyrics to “Whore” after hearing too many people getting into debt or not being about to pay their bills or rent on time after spending their weekly income on crap they didn’t need. I was and still am fed up with people who confuse their needs with their wants. I had been listening to a lot of PJ Harvey around the time we wrote this track and wanted to re-enact her no bullshit, power bitch persona my way.

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