Polara’s long-awaited fifth album Beekeeping is available now!
It’s been over three years since the band’s last release, and the wait was worth it! Beekeeping is teeming with the trademark Polara sound – adventurous, exciting “pysch” excursions, dreamy sonic textures, all contained within a concise 3-4 minute pop song framework. The record features some of the band’s coolest songs to date, including “Another Phase”, “Both Ends Burning”. and the amazing “E Flat”. Core band members Ed Ackerson, Jennifer Jurgens, and Peter Anderson have refined the Polara sound to a point where they can blend the most sublime, singalong hooks with searing noise with almost offhand ease. This is a mature but vibrant record full of skronk and melody, sure to brighten the spirits of Polara fans old and new.
Beekeeping is available on CD direct from the Susstones Shop. Also available digitally from all major online vendors including 
.
Another preview track from the new Polara album…
The Alarmists 11:45 PM
Polara 10:30 PM
The Mood Swings 9:30 PM
Mercurial Rage 8:30
NEW SPECIAL GUEST Joe Werner (of Strange Lights) 8:00 PM
Polara is playing a bit earlier so they can actually hang out and socialize at their record release show for a change!
Here’s another preview track from the forthcoming Polara album…sounds like a bit of a hit to us!
Buy tickets for the Polara/Alarmists/Mood Swings/Mercurial Rage show!
Posted Sun 20 Apr 2008 in general
Presale tickets for the May 9th Polara record release show are now available here.
Presented by 89.3 The Current, Reveille Magazine, Susstones, and How Was the Show
EXCERPT from howwastheshow:
Update 4/19: I’ve now had the chance to listen to the album several times, and I love it. It is indeed classic Polara, one of the qualities of that description being that there’s a palpable confidence in the songs themselves that blasts its way out of each track. What I mean is, these songs know that they’re good and sound as if they were just just dying to be sung. Beekeeping sounds like a companion album to both Ed Ackerson’s solo album and Polara’s Green Shoes EP. It adds a veritable pile of great new songs to the Polara canon and should make fans feel very lucky indeed, especially since Ackerson and his bandmates have still found time to attend to this important and central Susstones band despite being busy with other projects. (Fans should count themselves doubly lucky that it comes so hot on the heels of Ackerson’s solo album.) My favorite tracks so far: The rockers “Game Over,” and “Talk Me Down;” and the title track “Beekeeping” which oughtta ring a few bells if you’ve been listening to Ackerson’s recent material. And there are great surprises like “Out of Your Hands,” which comes on like Revolver-era Beatles meets Oasis and catches fire. I hate to get into the “best Polara album to date” game, but without quite saying actually that, Beekeeping is still really really good, very listenable and a joy to spin again and again. I know it’s still April now, but I can’t wait to find out what this album will sound like blasting through my speakers come Summer of 2008.
Polara will celebrate the release of Beekeeping with a release show at the Varsity Theater on Friday, May 9th and HowWasTheShow, stalwart fans of Polara and everything Ackerson will be sure to be on hand.
and
EXCERPT from Sixty to Zero:
Well, this is exciting news – Minneapolis noisepop pioneers Polara have risen like the proverbial phoenix and are ready once again to shake up a music scene that sometimes seems moribund and uninspired…on a good day. There’s a new Polara album ready to go and it’s called Beekeeping. Once again, it’s on Susstones and is set to drop on May 6, followed by a CD release party on May 9 at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis with support from The Alarmists and other exciting acts TBD. This is sure to be one of the coolest local gigs of the year; it’s been far too long since Ed Ackerson and his fellow space travelers have set the controls for the heart of the sun and taken lucky audiences along for a thrill ride to the outer limits of imagination.
The last major Polara release was Jetpack Blues in 2002, featuring “Is This It,” a lost hit single if there ever was one and one of the best songs to be released on a local album. Ever. A stop gap EP, “Green Shoes +4,” was released in early 2005 (sadly out of print, but well worth tracking down – the title song was originally destined for Beekeeping and the other 4 songs are uniformly excellent), but other than some rare, albeit memorable, local live shows, the Polara flame has barely been flickering recently.
One of our 60►0 “moles” recently had a chance to spend some time with an advance of Beekeeping and had this to say:
Beekeeping is a masterful achievement in PSYCHEDELIC ROCK. There’s a 4 song sequence in the middle of the record that is quite stunning; it’s as good as anything Ed has been involved with since he made his first record over 20 years ago. In some ways, this is a companion piece to Ed’s recent solo album (they share one song in common, although that’s not immediately evident from the tracklisting), even though they bear few sonic similarities. Beekeeping is teeming with the trademark Polara sound – adventurous, exciting “pysch” excursions featuring always amazing instrumental and vocal contributions, all contained within a concise 3-4 minute pop song framework.
Ackerson’s production on Beekeeping represents new levels of imagination and sheer élan; the entire aural panorama – from tiny details and textures bubbling under to the most epic sonic moments — is truly something to behold. The very sound of the album just shouts out tour de force. Fans may recognize several of the songs from sporadic live shows over the last few years (“Phase,” “E Flat,” “Talk Me Down”) mixed in with a whole bunch of future classics. There’s even a new “direction” or two thrown in the mix just to keep things interesting. I was also somewhat taken aback by just how prevalent the “rock” element is in many of the songs; at times this thing just smokes. And there is no shortage of hooks, either; several of these songs have “hit” written all over them, whatever that means in this baffling era. All I know is that if I heard the likes of “Talk Me Down,” “E Flat,” “Out of Your Hands” or the frighteningly heavy and catchy “Happy Ending” coming out of my car radio, I’d turn that shit up, hit the gas, and then it turn it up some more. After just a few spins, I’m comfortable in calling this the most consistent batch of winners Ed has ever assembled. It’s very likely that the accumulation of a huge backlog of material in the incubation period since Jetpack Blues has resulted in a treasure trove of outstanding material for this (and other future projects).
With hopefully impending releases coming from the next generation of Minneapolis psych rockers like First Communion Afterparty and Strange Lights, the release now of a killer new Polara album like Beekeeping, comes at a most opportune time. This is all very good news indeed for adventurous music fans far and wide. Fasten your seat belts — this should be a good ride.
Stay tuned for more details.
Here’s the official Susstones press release for the upcoming Polara album and show. Fascinating reading!
polara_beekeeping_bio.pdf
The release celebration for the new Polara album is at the Varsity Theater on Friday May 9th. Here’s a listing of performers:
The Alarmists
The Mood Swings
VERY special additional artists TBA
this is not the running order of the show; set times will be announced soon.
