http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/tampacalling/2009/07/07/sunbears/

"The last time I saw Sunbears! in November 2008, I was impressed by their ability to deliver a complete visual experience to go along with their sugary pop, even outside at New World Brewery. Sunbears! has enhanced their candyland set to greater dayglo heights with a variety of props, including a giant red balloon, bubbles and confetti, oh my! Recorded last fall, the Sunbears! cover of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” now adds a bit of unintentional poignancy to their act … at least until the shock of Michael Jackson’s death wears off. The audience danced up a storm to the Sunbears!’ happy-go-lucky pop tunes while throwing confetti to the beat. Sunbears! is also fun to listen to on disc and their current EP, Dream Happy Dreams, is a perfect summer dance soundtrack. Really, who couldn’t use a little auditory uplifting given the state of the world? I look forward to hearing and seeing what is next for this talented duo!"

EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

SUNBEARS! HAVE COVERED NEW ORDERS, THIEVES LIKE US!, FOR CEREMONY [A NEW ORDER TRIBUTE]! THE TRIBUTE, SLATED FOR A LATE 2009 / EARLY 2010 RELEASE BENEFITS THE SALFORD FOUNDATION TRUST'S TONY WILSON AWARD. OMZOGGGG! GET A SNEAK PEAK OF OUR TRIBUTE HERE!

AND NOW...
A WORD FROM NEWORDERTRIBUTE.COM:

"Florida independent record label, 24 Hour Service Station, has assembled a tribute album honoring the music of New Order entitled CEREMONY - A New Order Tribute. The double CD plus bonus disc and digital album are scheduled for release in the fall of 2009.

Participants include Rabbit In The Moon, Kate Havnevik, SUNBEARS!, Jah Division, The Cloud Room, DETACHMENTS, The Beauvilles, Kingsbury, The Penelopes, GD Luxxe, Pocket, XOXO, Kites with Lights, Dub Gabriel and many more!

Artists have donated a version of their favorite New Order track, as well as their take on “Ceremony” for the extra disc.

Proceeds from record sales will benefit the Salford Foundation Trust’s Tony Wilson Award, established in memory of Tony Wilson, the founding father of landmark independent record label Factory Records, who died of cancer in 2007. The trust will benefit children and young people who can demonstrate a special talent or ambition in the arts or creative skills.

The idea for this tribute came about in 2007, when Tony Wilson passed away from cancer. Marshall Dickson, founder of 24 Hour Service Station, was stirred to put together a fitting tribute to his hero. Upon discovery that a charity had been established in Wilson’s name to aide children with creative & musical skills, the pieces came together. Jump started by partner Sonshine Ward, the project has become an international endeavor with artists from around the globe, equally inspired and moved by Wilson’s passing, answering the “Sirens’ Call.”

at some time last week, SUNBEARS! posted a status update announcing that they posted their cover of Michael Jackson's classic tune "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" which they had recorded last fall and have been playing live, unannounced, around the nation throughout the spring of '09, onto their myspace featured playlist, in honour of the passing of the late, great Michael Jackson, last thursday evening.

One particular individual decided that he/she needed to speak out about such an action. Here is what happened:

SUNBEARS! IN MEMORY OF THE LATE GREAT MICHAEL JACKSON, SUNBEARS! HAVE COVERED ONE OF HIS GREATEST COMPOSITIONS. GIVE IT A LISTEN ON OUR PAGE!
at 11:03 AM Jun 26
from mobile
Mood:BUMMED

Duval_Sean at 11:44 AM Jun 26 Nice self promotion at a time of loss there, fellas. Oh? it's a tribute? Sure.

SUNBEARS! at 12:39 PM Jun 26
@duval_sean ? have you absolutely no sensibility to SUNBEARS! outlook on life? it's nothing to do with self promotion, it has to do with honouring one of our favorite musical artists of all time. way to judge, way to be completely cynical, and way to have bad taste. consider yourself CUT, my... former friend.

::soon there after, DUVAL_SEAN wrote SUNBEARS! a message stating::

From: Duval_Sean
Jun 26, 2009 1:00 PM
Subject: Who Cares
Body: So you cut me--who cares? A tribute to Jackson would be you two HOMOS shutting the FUCK UP. Death Cab imitating sissies.

From: SUNBEARS!
Date: Jun 26, 2009 1:16 PM
Subject: RE: Who Cares
Body: you're terribly angry, sir.

we'll pray for you. - Matthew 7:12

lol

cheers,
SUNBEARS!

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/tampacalling/2009/06/26/interview-sunbears-the-impressive-jax-duo-plays-crowbar-next-friday/

June 26th, 2009 by Eric Snider in Features

"Two years ago, Jonathan Berlin was in a bad place. He was the lead singer and songwriter for a band called Bernard that had a distribution deal through East/West, a division of Warner Bros. The trio, whose drummer was his longtime collaborator and best friend Jared Bowser, had played 300 shows on tour.

So what exactly was the problem, you might wonder?

“With Bernard, we worked our asses off to make it happen,” Berlin, 25 (at right in photo), says in a phone interview. “As it turned out, it just wasn’t fun. I always loved writing songs, but after we got hooked up with Warner Bros, I started writing and I couldn’t do it. It was like, ‘I’m writing a record for Warner Bros. This has to be good.’ The whole thing wasn’t really awesome.”

Given those circumstances, a lot of artists would’ve continued to flog it, but Berlin decided to walk away. The Bernard split led in part to a four-month rift between him and Bowser, 23. Berlin decided to rethink this whole music career thing. And he came up with something of a novel solution: He had to basically stop trying. So Berlin retreated to his loft in downtown Jacksonville and started making music for himself. “I started writing, but had no particular ambition,” he says. “I was in a place where I wanted to write something that made me feel good, something that I might listen to.”

Next thing he knew he had six songs and decided to record an EP under the name Sunbears! During a Bernard tour, Berlin and Bowser had visited the Smithsonian in D.C. “There was this little replica sunbear standing upright,” he recalls fondly. “It was like, ‘Look at this little guy. It’s a sunbear.’ I think they’re indigenous to Malaysia. They might be endangered. The name just stuck in my head.”

Berlin released the first Sunbears! EP, For Everyone — which he recorded entirely on his own — independently in a download-only format. He layered gauzy, slow-moving keyboards into a lush backdrop for melancholy hooks sung in his fervent, at times pleading, tenor. All told, not bad, but the new stuff retained vestiges of Bernard’s Radiohead fetish.

Then Berlin and Bowser patched things up. He hesitated to ask the drummer to work with him again, but finally summoned the resolve and Bowser readily accepted. They jumped right into recording a new EP, and the collaborative environment — “to have Jared be there with me and excited, it was such a fun thing” — had a profound impact on Berlin. It was if he’d taken his music and shaken out all the mope.

The second EP, Dream Happy Dreams, opens with a burping synth-drum beat and the sound of little children laughing. The song, “A Lovely Tuesday Afternoon,” then launches into an uptempo rock groove, tinkling pianos and the kind of soaring synth line that would be right at home on a Flaming Lips record. The melody soars even higher when Berlin sings, “We’ll make it/ We’re tired but we still have faith/ We’ll make it.”

Dream Happy Dreams continues in this uplifting vein, adding influences from Berlin’s youth like the Beatles and Beach Boys. Berlin, who lived in small-town Texas before moving to Jacksonville at 16, was reared on ’60s music. His father was a DJ at an oldies station. “I’d go with him to the station, get a Mountain Dew and a bag of Skittles and we’d play this game: who can name the song the fastest?” he remembers. “My dad was a Beatles head. I got all of that ’60s stuff in volumes, and didn’t give any resistance.”

Because he was home-schooled, Berlin didn’t have a big peer group to hip him to the latest new sounds. It wasn’t until his mid-teens that he developed his own, more modern, tastes. “It was never about the need to check out the latest Bush record,” he says. “In the ’90s, I started getting into the Flaming Lips, Ben Folds, quirky, nerdier stuff. Weezer, I loved Weezer. Still do.”

That sense of whimsy finally found its way into Berlin’s music with Dream Happy Dreams. “As we were working on it, Jared and I looked at each other and said, ‘I think this is good. This feels like our own sound,’” he says.

Despite the artistic success of the music, Sunbears! were determined not to jump back into the music-biz rat race. They didn’t shop the EPs to labels, didn’t rustle up a booking agent, didn’t even press CDs.

But a funny thing happened. Sunbears! started to take off anyway. One of their favorite bands, Dredg out of San Francisco, played Jacksonville on a Halloween, and Sunbears! wrangled an opening slot — strictly for the fun of it. The duo performed a loopy set dressed as zombies.

“Dredg was more serious, darker, but they came up to us afterward and said, ‘We have 20 dates all through the Midwest. If you guys wanna play, it starts next week. We can toss you 150 a night,’” Berlin recounts. “We thought, ‘Yeah, we can jump in a car and drive across the country for a couple weeks. It was amazing. We played for like 1,200 people a night. And it was weird, because the whole time it was happening, we never had any intention of making anything happen. We played 300 shows with Bernard and never came close to what Sunbears! has done, and Sunbears! is on its 48th show.”

They include a month-long tour with Black Kids and Mates of State.

How long will this serendipitous tour arc last for Sunbears!? Will they have to, at some point, knuckle down and try?

“I guess it’s something we’ll have to deal with soon,” Berlin says with a chuckle. “I really don’t want to start looking at things like, ‘What can we do to push this thing forward?’ I’ve been through that a couple times before. I’d rather it grow organically.

“And I’m weird about promoting myself. I feel like a tool saying, ‘Check out my record.’ I think the music’s been getting better and better and I’m happy with it. We’re not trying to impress anyone.”

Pretty impressive."

http://lifehasnewmeaning.blogspot.com/2009/05/sunbears-dream-happy-dreams-2009.html

"Dream Happy Dreams by SUNBEARS! is easily one of the best albums of 2009, and yet, it doesn’t even get half the recognition it deserves. This skillful duo masterfully pulls off a combination of an experimental and psychedelic sound with bubbly, electric indie pop. The melding of these two sounds results in an album that is very accessible, and delightful to listen to. Throughout the album, there are moments reminiscent of Of Montreal, Beirut, Animal Collective, and other such bands (to name a few).

The album begins and ends with two pleasant instrumental tracks, “Le Penné Pageant” and “Sunshine At 9 P.M.”, and in between those two are five epic, happy yet melancholy, unique, beautiful songs. The lyrical content is cute and poetic, and invokes the urge to smile and cry—AT THE SAME TIME. There is not a single dead spot in all thirty-one minutes of this gem of an album. Their sound is unique and interesting, and yet, it’s not difficult to listen to, as some bands of this ilk can be. It’s an album to listen to when you’re happy or sad, alone or with friends, etc. I can’t say anything else except for: LISTEN TO IT!"

http://barrettesandbows.blogspot.com/2009/05/dream-happy-dreams.html

"Went to the Black Kids show last night and was pleasantly surprised by the opening band, The Sunbears. Just bought their album "Dream Happy Dreams" and its just as good as the live show. yay!"

http://allisonsthoughtbubbles.blogspot.com/2009/05/black-kids-sunbears-and-lots-of.html

"The Sunbears! opened for them and also put on a really entertaining show (combine MGMT's synth duo with The Flaming Lips' stage theatrics and you've got Sunbears!). I highly recommend you download both bands if you haven't already."