Polar - Surrounded By Happiness

Polar, in this fourth album, have had to make a very small jump to go from one side of the rope to the other. After a record like Comes with a Smile (2004 Jabalina), exhausting, that required a lot of time and efforts to record, full of arrangements, with a very diverse instrumentation, you could imagine what would be Surrounded by happiness: Polar in it's purest state. And, althought the title of the album would connect in any way both records, they are very close and far at the same time. They're far because what was sweetness, now is rawness. The kind smile of Aramburu is replaced by the more complex perspective of happiness offered by Nacho Olivares: ambiguous, melancholic, ironic, dark, urban... What was peace, here is tension, what was casressing sounds, now is distortion and strenght. The string quartet, the Farfisa organ, the metalophone... they're all gone to crap, to shape a more basic album, conceived for a band formed by two guitars, bass and drums, and recorded as it was being played live. It's not casual that in Sorrounded by happiness the valencian quartet is able to capture the intensity, the immediacy and the dimension that their guitars reach in their concerts. Because of this, who believed that the atmospheres and melodies of Polar have reached the highest, will notice that now they're beyond the sky, in contact with the stars, as the announced in their second album a letter for the stars (2002 Jabalina). Almost without 'overdubs', recorded in three days and a half, Surrounded by happiness stood by the work at the desk of Matthew Barnhart, responsible of records from bands like Knife in the water or the New Year, defenders of the audible austerity and absolute detractors of the usual pyrothecnics of the recording studios. This is why Surrounded by happiness sound more direct, pure, and resuming, addictive, where Polar offer more and more faces. And there is the winner ace trio that is "Tell me", "Martin Eden" and "Stuart", a real declaration of intentions starting the record like that. Or, on the other hand, the non less impressive, formed by "A way to forget", "1988" and "Pere i Laia", where the lilting guitars seem to crystalize in any moment. And the closeness I mentioned before? What connects this band with the one of the previous records? It's undoubtely, Polar more than ever with their unmistakable game of guitars, with the careness of the sound, with the maximum control over musical parameters like dynamics, tension, velocity.