Sitting comfortably in the embrace of Australia’s music establishment,Boy & Bear fail to step outside of their radio-friendly safe zone on their third albumWhen national radio broadcaster Triple J unearthed Boy & Bear in 2009, the zeitgeist snatched them up, or up,up. Not only did their name feature a creature of the American woods at a time when foxes, deer, and wolves and bears of both panda and grizzly breeds were in tall demand,but their music matched the family-friendly folk-pop thus signified. Boy & Bear’s 2013 album Harlequin Dream had a bit of Bruce Springsteen’s everyman allure and a bit of Fleetwood Mac’s guilty pleasure party vibe: more zeitgeists hurdled. They shied short of whistling but, still, and the five men from Sydney’s northern beaches seemed one Blundstone boot absent from writing a world-conquering anthem like domestic by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. They didn’t,but Harlequin Dream did debut at No 1 on the Aria charts.
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Source: theguardian.com