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Reckless Stories of the Night: A Review of Nocturnal Journal by The Bipolar Bears


Reckless Stories of the Night: A Review of Nocturnal Journal by The Bipolar Bears
Jamendo.com - September 9, 2009
by Joy Anne Icayan

Nocturnal Journal is the second album by The Bipolar Bears, an indie-virtual-experimental group which came out with Water Therapy in 2006. Following the thematic technique of the first album which sang of love, longing and loss using the metaphor of water, Nocturnal Journal focuses on the subject of night and darkness while intuiting a deeper, more personal story coming from the artist. As any album with a predefined theme, in this case the nocturne, it runs the challenge of finding all the angles we traditionally assign to the word, exploring them, and giving a new story to a much abused metaphor, transcending our notions of that archetype to provide us with a deeper look into what else it might hold.

The album contains ten songs, starting out with "Comet Comes," a meditation into the brevity of stellar happenings, in this case a transient lover. Already it tries to define what the album should be: in Eric Gamalinda's words, brief, beautiful and blinding. "Comet Comes" is delivered with such cold consistent rhythm which highlights the contained anguish in the persona. It is a sad voice trying to expound on happiness, trying to rationalize. Another song which focuses on this transience, albeit more overtly is "The Night is Too Short." All the possibilities of a life contained in a few hours.

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Read the full story at UnRatedMagazine.com

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