ALBUM REVIEW: The Best Part About Being Human – Bearings
Bringing back the day of Canada’s pop-punk domination over the music industry, BEARINGS have returned with their latest record The Best Part About Being Human. A 10-track release full of that fun-loving, over-emotional feeling that many have grown up with and are still growing up with, it shows there will always be a place for reliving the summer days of the 2000s.
Kicking off with lead single Scenery, the album takes things to that pinnacle reminiscence from the very beginning. The trip is off to a good start as this is a sound that can bounce off the walls as well as the moshers living and breathing those tunes. The feeling is good and the effect of the music is even greater. Frontman Doug Cousins has that voice just uplifting enough to surf the waves of these songs, but with multiple levels of deep, serious, heartfelt passion to make the words leaving his lips so much more believable than they seem.
Gone So Gone is what one may label the stereotypical pop-punk anthem – think the “generic” label that Welsh rockers NECK DEEP place upon themselves – and may be the most stereotypical track appearing on the record. The chorus loops around the brain endlessly and the guitar break mid-track will just tie bows and knots within the memory to guarantee this will be stuck for hours or even days to come. Weeks, perhaps. It’s a timeless sensation; no matter where it’s heard, the sea breeze will fly through the air and the sunbeams will be zapped onto the skin. This is a summer anthem for those who just aren’t pop music people. There are always a handful year after year, and BEARINGS have managed to add to the 2023 collection.
Pop-punk is not dead, not even wounded. It’s living on in the grooves of these records. The range is well represented within The Best Part About Being Human, which goes hand in hand with the album’s own title; this co-ordinates well with the additional of Ocean Dream. Still a danceable song, still with a memorable hook of a chorus and a fantastic rhythm of vocals thanks to COUSINS, the tone feels a little downer, and with that feels a little more varied of a creation than other tracks. With the saxophone break coming in as Cousins‘ vocals echo in the background, it brings forth the representation of how this genre has adapted to new times and new trends. Fading away like a dream disappearing upon waking up, this is one to give BEARINGS their credit on. They’ve shown they understand the assignment before them: take this genre and make it their genre and no one else’s. With the switch-ups and calm-downs, they have accomplished this unspoken expectation and very clearly had fun doing it.
“The best part about being human, is being alive,” is how the final track Human kicks off. It’s an ode to the human experience: highs and lows, smiles and frowns. Navigating this life the best anyone can; to live life and not just exist on a plane. It’s a very personal way to sign off the album, as while still fulfilling the alternative formula they’ve executed for themselves as a group, it speaks as a singular experience, like a diary entry that’s been presented within a recording studio. The thoughts that have jumped out of the mind through the airwaves. Giving oneself that honestly and clarity, it forms trust and shows that there is still a meaning to music after so many years and decades, especially within the punk subgenres.
There are good and bad parts of the human experience. The best part about being human however, will always be hearing the stories of those who have felt, seen, heard, and lived in ways that will resonate with one’s own. The best part is that BEARINGS is there.
Rating: 8/10
The Best Part About Being Human is out now via Pure Noise Records.
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