Purveyors of: Creaking dirges and dulcet crooning; aural Scotch.
File next to: Windburnt, pale and numb / hiding their tear-stained faces / behind worn surfboards
Playing: WL 579 a.k.a. “Halloween You! Sexy Monster: A Slow Scary Riot for New Zombie Kanada,” Thursday Oct. 31 at the Monarch Tavern.

Victoria-based Himalayan Bear feature myriad collaborators, but are anchored by Ryan Beattie (formerly of Chet and Frog Eyes). His latest LP, 2011's Hard Times, is 7 tracks of glorious ache and is available at himalayanbear.bandcamp.com. Dean Williams (formerly Bunk Bedouin) caught up with Ryan to talk about The Big Hurt, Hawaii, and his general ambivalence towards ham sandwiches. 

You've spent a lot as a member of a larger band, but the Himalayan Bear recordings are more a revolving door affair, with you as the main ongoing member. Does the lonesome sound of Himalayan Bear tie in to this being a more solitary activity? 

I do play a lot of shows solo, but I like to change it up quite a bit. Different line-ups/instrument configurations always offer a new approach to each song. Songs tend to get stale for me very quickly, so this is a necessary motivational tool to keep me from abandoning tunes every six months. It can be lonely for sure, doing solo shows, recordings, etc. At the same time, when I sing these tunes there is a certain level of rearranging that happens with each pass. Tempos fluctuate, breaks change, things get longer or shorter or more saturated or droney, etc. That's something that I've only been ever able to accomplish on the fly with a handful of musician friends, my drummer friend Marek being one of them. But I think the lonesome sound you're referring to can be mostly attributed to a somewhat crushing melancholy — a great ally at times and a brutal foe at others, without trying to sound too earnest.

Do you feel being based in Victoria has has shaped your sound in a particular way? Or put another way, what came first: the crushing melancholy or living on an island? 

Victoria is a smallish city, but is still pretty densely populated; there are a lot of the same kind of social gains and disadvantages to this depending on where you stand with your fellow human being. I will say this: Just minutes away from the city still exists a wooded solitude that ranges from the pleasant lapping brine of the Juan de Fuca Strait upon the rocky crags, below a sloping Garry oak meadow to, a few hours away, a kind of perilous wood of impassable brush and salal 'neath giant cedar stands and the crashing of the Pacific on the vast ruinous sprawl of looming black rock and grey skyline. What I mean to say is, this is where I grew up and the city is like an island in the midst of this. The sometimes crushing but ever-soothing melancholy is just actually a product of hanging out in a city full of modern folks doing modern-folk-in-the-city type things. Which is my actual reality. "I hold the world but as the world."

Wow. I… What an answer. Hey, one of your press stills shows you in a shop selling ham sandwiches. Do you have a strong opinion on ham sandwiches, one way or the other? 

That photo was taken in the Dutch Bakery diner in Victoria. I don't really like ham sandwiches, but I do like a good BLT.

Are you familiar with Curtis Mayfield's “Hard Times”? In particular Baby Huey’s version. I was curious if the name of your latest LP was a hat-tip to the song, or just hard times in general. 

The Baby Huey version is superior. Who else can scream like that? No one. However, Hard Times the album name was inspired by a friend of mine. It's also a nod to the [Charles Dickens] book, and also a nod to being in the music industry for most of my life, as well as a nod to people who have actual struggles in their life. It's also kind of a lark.

Your latest album has a bit of a “lonely surfer” vibe to it, and you've spoken in the past about your appreciation for Hawaiian music. Talk about your connection to the music of Hawaii.

I went to Kauai when I was 20 for a couple weeks. I remember drinking a lot of beer and hanging out on the beach and generally being a gawky tourist. At the end of the trip I remember thinking, “I've had enough, can't wait to get home.” But about six months later I started to dream of Kauai, not at all in the way I'd experienced it. I had dreams with these drifting melodies and emerald-ridged mountains the smell of virile soil and sweet plumeria. Actual dreams of this place, but aspects that I hadn't consciously experienced on my booze-soaked trip. This obsession gradually took hold of me and I'm now ceaselessly compelled to get back to North Shore. My girlfriend and I go camping there sometimes.

What is it about Hawaiian music that is so inherently melancholy? It's odd — such a seemingly idyllic and sunny place, yet their traditional music is parsed as sad by many if not most. 

The melodies — both the traditional melodies of Hawaii, as well as the western-fused ones (which owe the introduction of country swing in helping their genesis) — are, to me, both extremely joyous and intensely melancholic at the same time and in the same phrases. It's a sometimes perfect musical expression. The bittersweet, like life. Much of the music written in that part of the world is redolent with the bittersweet. For example, the most famous of Hawaiian songs, "Aloha Oe", written by Hawaii's last native Queen, Liliʻuokalani, is a strikingly heartbreaking song with a complex weave of meanings. The song is in some ways a song of protest to the Hawaiian people, with the refrain "one fond embrace, farewell to thee, until we meet again. (Aloha Oe)" (Aloha meaning hello, farewell, love and just also kind of beauty.) As if to say what? "This is over, we'll meet again, I love you, they can't take our aloha away." Other accounts claim the song is simply a love letter, reminiscing about the last embrace of a lover. Either way, the song retains the same breadth because of the melodic structure and bittersweetness balanced perfectly on all footings. I've always been obsessed, even as a child, with how music can have that kind of deep structure. Anyway, it's a beautiful song, probably one of the best ever written.

Look for Himalayan Bear's upcoming release Guitar Born To Howl, to be released sometime this winter (preview a new track, "Racilla," below) - and catch him live on Thursday, October 31st at the Monarch Tavern (12 Clinton St.) for Wavelength 579.