Polar Bear, a British quartet with two tenor saxophonists plus bass and drums, was one of the most striking ensembles to emerge on the home circuit in 2003. Unlike so many hurtling, high-energy postbop bands, its approach was distinctive, based on the murmuring conversations of the two horns and the ability of bassist Tom Herbert and the superb drummer Seb Rochford to weave their contributions into the sound of the ensemble's evolving melody.
This is the band's debut album and it captures their unique virtues, from the slow criss-crossing of long, exhaling tenor sounds over Rochford's meditative, almost doodling percussion to the gradual thickening of a single rising motif on Not Here, Not Near.
Wareham's charging baritone sax swinger Polar Bear Standing and Ready is counterbalanced by some blurty free jazz, while Julia Biel's vocal Snow could almost be a whimsical Robert Wyatt song. The closer, Wild Horses, is a classic smoky ballad with a free-impressionistic undertow, in which the tenor harmonies suggest a much bigger band. - John Fordham
Few British groups of recent times have been so extravagantly hyped and yet Polar Bear do, on closer inspection, really match up to the publicity and press raves. Rochford is a formidable musician and in Lockheart and Wareham he has seasoned players who know their way around a range of idioms. They weave in and out of Rochford's deceptively quiet playing; this, perhaps, is the point of the name - polar bears are attractive, cuddly creatures but among the fiercest beast on the planet - and there is a dark energy to these tracks reminiscent of Radiohead at their most extended. Rockford's rock and avant-rock tastes are evident here and there on both this record and the later Held On The Tips Of The Fingers, but there is no hint that his ambitions run to either prog-rock or Nu Jazz. A formidable improviser, he keeps jazz playing in focus at all times.
"Eve's Apple" (one of the great contemporary jazz songs) and "Wild Horses" were apparently done in the hope that Björk (elderly jazz fans scratch their heads) might do a guest vocal. As it is, Julia Biel does just fine on her spots more than fine when the voice relaxes out of 'projecting' mode, but this is the first album's only besetting fault, an air of eagerness and self-consciousness that sometimes blunt the music. "New Dark Park" is an anthem for the new age, for good or ill. - The Penguin Jazz Guide (Brian Morton, Apple Books)
Tracks
01. Heavy Paws On The Purple Floor
02. Not Here, Not Near
03. Eve's Apple
04. Polar Bear Standing And Ready
05. Urban Kilt (Tom Herbert)
06. Snow
07. Underneath You Can See Too Much
08. The Shapes In The Clouds Aren't Always Happy
09. New dark Park
10. Wild Horses
MARK LOCKHEART tenor saxophone
PETE WAREHAM tenor saxophone
TOM HERBERT double bass
SEBASTIAN ROCHFORD drums, percussion, drum programming
All music composed by Sebastian Rochford, except (5) by Tom Herbert
Babel - BDV2446