Ursa Major

If you told me a year ago I would be writing a review of Third Eye Blind’s fourth album, I would sooner have proclaimed my love for this album than have believed you. But that’s another story.

Ursa Major is the constellation of a bear, and like a big honey-sucking grizzly, the pop-rock mammoth, Third Eye Blind, have spent some time off snoozing in their cave. Six years have passed since their prior release, 2003’s Out Of The Vein (with the exception of the Red Star digital EP that came out in 2008), but now singer/songwriter Stephan Jenkins, drummer Brad Hargreaves, and guitarist Tony Fredianelli are finally back with some new material. The 12 track Ursa Major is only the beginning of the band’s comeback, as they are planning a full-length follow up, Ursa Minor, to be released in the relatively near future.

This album features a return to the more immaculate and glossy production of Third Eye Blind’s 1999 sophomore album, Blue, with snappy drums, airy and enveloping wah-wah guitar, lightly distorted vocals laden with delay and subtle FX, and a more stadium-ready mix, as opposed to the more close-roomed sound of Out Of The Vein.

But does Ursa Major deliver? After roughly half a decade of hiatus, can a frontman and songwriter in his mid-forties still write beautiful music with lyrics that ring with boldness, brilliance, and sweet, sweet conflict? Will fans of the self-titled record, Blue, and Out Of The Vein be satisfied? Is Arion Salazar back in the band? Tragically, he is not…but the answer to all the other questions is YES.

Let’s go through the album and find out why.

Current single, “Don’t Believe A Word” is a pre-Obama era middle-finger to the critically unthinking populace of America. The song contains my favorite analogy in any musical piece I’ve heard so far: America’s aggressive and willfully ignorant denizens likened to “an angry child dumped online:” full of vitriolic and senseless, and misdirected anger—and most importantly: hiding behind a screen.

I am rarely a fan of political songs, but “Don’t Believe…” takes aim and executes perfectly, recalling our not too distant past rage with an inept leadership that this country suffered under for far too long.

“Can You Take Me” is the definition of a phenomenal intro track. The stop-and-start verse in 6/8 and Fredianelli’s bubbly lead guitar are what make this song so magical for me. Put it in your car stereo, listen to it while you’re running, or listen to it while you’re jacking a car stereo and running away. Listen to it in a moment of fervor, inspiration, and passion and put it on repeat.

“Summertown” is another serotonin-soaked highlight of the album about losing friends and a “tramp in a little sundress” bumping lines of fake coke in a summer bungalow. The nostalgic power pop-rock tone turns into an almost freestyle rap funk and breakbeat coda, in which Stephan proudly announces his most secret desire: “I wish I was a spray can!”

Another song that I’m a sucker for is “About To Break.” This is the kind of song title that sounds like it would be written by a group of Screamo punks throwing a conniption on a Clear Channel station, but the song is one of the more gentle on the album.

“About To Break” is somewhat of a scatterbrained fisheye glance at America, and the good and the bad within it. Although the song is somewhat cryptic, it seems to examine the marginalized and the voiceless. There are brief cameos of the mentally disturbed, needle exchange social workers, and lesbians in a bakery. Each time I listen to a song it feels like a long walk through the streets of San Francisco.

The song looks at the beauty of these downtrodden characters, and at all the ugliness in America: the residual xenophobia and intolerance, the needless divisiveness of race, background, and orientation, the forsaking of true beauty for the superficial, our slavery to trends and popular opinion, and the suffering that corporate entities profit from. Stephan still looks optimistically at the state of our nation, predicting that these social ills are “about to break like a fever,” hinting at a new state of unity to come.

The sweetly awkward ballad, “One In Ten” is a bit of an oddity in Stephan’s lyric book. The song is about a guy trying unsuccessfully to lovingly woo a “butch girl” who he is friends with. The concept itself is nothing odd, but the lyrics, although mostly warm and heartfelt, are at times borderline creepy.

Trying to finagle his way into the panties of his prospective lesbian lover Stephan comes up with this sly hook: “what’s the difference when it goes down? If it’s a girl or if it’s guys? Can’t you just close your eyes? Baby, close your eyes.” That line sounds eerily similar to what my cellmate, T-Bone, said to me my first night in Pelican Bay. I just wish he’d asked as nicely as Stephan does.

Stephan then comes up with this hum-dinger of a pick-up line that you fellows can try at your local lesbian bar: “love doesn’t come in perfect packages—that means I qualify. And I know you were born this way, but I thought that we could give it a try.” I’m not sure whether Stephan’s approach is awkwardly considerate or hilariously offensive to this girl, but rest assured, he won’t be getting in this Peppermint Paddy’s pants.

Seriously though, I actually do like this song. For any guy who has been ‘chasing Amy,’ or any person who has longed for another with an incompatible orientation for that matter, this is a bittersweet and funny song.

Perhaps what has become one of my favorite songs on Ursa, is “Water Landing.” This ode to an unavoidably failing relationship likens the ailing bond between the two people to an airplane nose-diving into the ocean. The song is musically serene despite its epic instrumentation and its lyrics foretelling a gruesome and impending death.

The album closer, semi-acoustic ballad, “Monotov’s Private Opera,” is in my opinion, one of the album’s strongest and most beautiful songs. One thing that most Third Eye Blind listeners will pick up on is that the entire song utilizes the exact same three-part chord progression that their 1997 masterpiece, “I Want You” does: G to A minor to C. It’s that beautiful sequence of chords that you probably hear in the tender ending moments of most teen movies; it’s like the sound in your head before you went in for the kiss on your first date.

In the song, Stephan speaks through a character who is “stuck inside a poem,” aching for a former love, lost in bittersweet nostalgia, but also filled with unshakable hope for the future. The album closes with a small, intimate chorus of people singing, “Everything changed in a day. And I know another one is on the way.” It looks a little cheesy on paper, but I can’t think of better words or a more beautiful melody to close the album.

Although some of Stephan’s songs are of political nature, his bread and butter are still relationship and break-up songs. His muses are the women that he becomes invested in and the love that he loses. These last lines in “Monotov’s…” of braving the future, whatever it may hold, and in spite of past tragedies and let-downs are a beautiful statement for both this album, and for himself as a person…even if he leads a comfortable and cushy rock star life.

Like every Third Eye Blind album, Stephan lyrically kills, and that’s part of what makes Ursa Major so immensely enjoyable for me. Unlike so many other artists, he is a master at composing lyrics that are just as (or sometimes even more) inspiring as the music he helps write. In a recent interview with website, “Friends Or Enemies” Stephan said, “I think that our audience is very wordy. I think that they can smell a fake a mile away.”

Although I am only recently a huge fan of Third Eye Blind, I can attest that Stephan’s lyrics are always genuine and almost always ingeniously crafted. Ursa Major is no exception. The bear has awakened!

Must-hear songs from Ursa Major (in no particular order):

1) “Can You Take Me”

2) “Water Landing”

3) The last minute and forty-four seconds of “Summertown”

4) “Monotov’s Private Opera”

5) “Bonfire”

6) “About To Break”

Bonus: Check out the full version of the album’s closing instrumental, “Carnival Barker,” on Youtube. The minute and twenty-five second clip used in Ursa is beautiful, but simply doesn’t do this amazing song justice.