Bears

If you thought Henry Cow was a pretty political band to start with, you may be even more taken aback by the Art Bears, which was put together following Henry Cow's demise by former Cows Chris Cutler (percussion), Fred Frith (guitar, violin), and Dagmar Krause (voice). On The World As It Is Today and its predecessor, Winter Songs, the Art Bears move away from the long-form art rock of Henry Cow and get much, much more politically explicit: song titles like "The Song of the Dignity of Labour Under Capital" and "The Song of Investment Capital Overseas" almost sound like Monty Python gags today, but if any humor was intended it was clearly meant to be mordant. Frankly, the lyrics are so overwrought and portentous that it's hard to take them seriously. But the music is something else again…

The guitar experimentation of Adrian Belew and Rob Fetters is top-notch on this record, but the material itself is not. Belew and his backing group of Cincinnati, Ohio-based musicians tend to sound like many other bands. On the first track, "Aches and Pains," the Bears literally break out all the bells and whistles, as those items are incorporated into what seems to be a second-rate Squeeze song. Belew and Fetters do manage to polish up some of the rough spots, however, on songs like "Robobo's Beef," which transforms a distorted electric guitar into what sounds like an electric violin helmed by Jean-Luc Ponty's evil twin brother. The album doesn't lack diversity, as heard on tracks ranging from lullabyes ("Little Blue River") to fusion worldbeat ("Rabbit Manor"), but it does lack fully developed writing. The record is a mixed palette with bits of music that could have made up a beautiful canvas if they were carefully thought out.