Polar Bear Club on tour

Polar Bear Club chatted with Alternative Press recently and unveiled the title of their forthcoming album, Clash Battle Guilt Pride, which is set to hit stores later this summer from Bridge Nine! Check out the interview below and be sure to see the band out on the road starting Friday on the Take Action Tour. Stay tuned for more exciting information on PBC and new songs soon, as well as a special website for Clash Battle Guilt Pride coming soon!


Later this week, Polar Bear Club will embark on the Take Action tour with Silverstein, Bayside, the Swellers and Texas in July. In the preceding weeks, however, the band were at Salad Days Studio in Baltimore with producer Brian McTernan, hard at work on album No. 3, Clash Battle Guilt Pride.


According to vocalist Jimmy Stadt, Polar Bear Club went into the studio with more songs – 14, to be exact -- than ever before. “We’re really going to have a hard time cutting songs,” he says. “If we do, we’re going to feel pretty strongly about [our B-sides] as well.”

The band amassed this much music due to prolonged time off the road - post-AP Tour fall, they had three months free to write - and by tempering their self-editing.

“We have a tendency to be really analytical [toward] our songs, and be like, ‘Well, let’s not do this,’ and ‘Let’s do this, let’s scrap this,’” Stadt says. “This time around, we sort of knew that Brian [McTernan] was going to be that guy. We attacked [the music] with an attitude of, ‘Let’s not judge any of this. Let’s write it all. If something’s really, really not working, let’s not worry about it. Let’s just write, write, write, until we get to the studio.’ That’s just where we ended up.”


Stadt is thankful for McTernan’s input, and says the producer is going to use his “outside perspective” to “pump up the best parts of [each] song…We’re really, really playing up our choruses, moreso than we ever have before,” he says. “We have three-chorus songs. We’ve never really done that. It’s great. It just makes sense for us to be doing that now, and it feels good, and we all love it.”

McTernan and the members of Polar Bear Club also found common ground in their formative influences - namely, the punk, hardcore and what Stadt calls the “true emo” of the ‘90s.

“[On Pride] we’re harkening to Rites Of Spring and early Jimmy Eat World and Embrace and bands like that,” he says. “The cool part about it though, too, is vocally, I ground it in a Polar Bear Club realm. Which is cool. We’re experimenting with what we can do and then hearing how the vocals can make it Polar Bear Club."

Stadt wanted to stay away from writing a record about touring, although the band’s relentless road schedule has influenced Pride’s lyrics.

“[There are songs about] drive and ambition, and what it does to yourself and what it does to your relationships,” he says. “There was a point where I started noticing that my relationship to the band was mirroring the ups and downs of my personal relationships as well. There’s a little bit of that exploration in [the album] too.”

Stadt is confident that the band’s low profile will pay off in a big way very soon - and that’s not just because he says Polar Bear Club are aiming “to get an awesome tour” to coincide with Pride’s release.

“If I’m being honest with you, I feel like people aren’t thinking of Polar Bear Club as much these days,” he says. “We’re at an end of an album cycle, we did a lot of support tours this past year. We’re coming out big with this album, and we’re really proud of it. In a way, I like that people have Polar Bear Club in the back of their minds, because they can rediscover us. I think it’s going to work really well with the album.”


altPOLAR BEAR CLUB - ON TOUR
Apr 22 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
Apr 23 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
Apr 25 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head Live
Apr 26 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Raleigh, NC @ Lincoln Theatre
Apr 28 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Atlanta, GE @ Center Stage
Apr 29 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Orlando, FL @ The Club at Firestone
Apr 30 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution
May 01 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)St. Petersburg, FL @ State Theatre
May 02 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Pensacola, FL @ Phineas Phogg's
May 04 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald's
May 05 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)San Antonio, TX @ White Rabbit
May 06 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Dallas, TX @ Trees
May 07 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Tulsa, OK @ Cain's Ballroom
May 09 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Mesa, AZ @ The Nile
May 10 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Anaheim, CA @ House of Blues
May 11 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)San Diego, CA @ Soma
May 12 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)West Hollywood, CA @ House of Blues
May 14 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Sacramento, CA @ Ace of Spades
May 15 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater
May 16 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Seattle, WA @ El Corazon
May 18 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
May 19 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Denver, CO @ The Summit Music Hall
May 20 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
May 21 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Des Moines, IA @ Peoples Court
May 22 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Chicago, IL @ Metro
May 24 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Covington, KY @ Madison Theatre
May 25 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Pontiac, MI @ Crofoot Ballroom
May 26 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Pittsburgh, PA @ Altar Bar
May 27 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)Williamsville, NY @ Club Infinity
May 28 Polar Bear Club (w/ Bayside, The Swellers)New York, NY @ Best Buy Theatre Times Square
Jul 13 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Kingston, United Kingdom @ Peel
Jul 14 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Norwich, United Kingdom @ Marquee
Jul 16 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Leeds, United Kingdom @ Cockpit
Jul 17 Polar Bear Club Dublin, Ireland @ The Pint
Jul 18 Polar Bear Club Milton Keynes, United Kingdom @ The Cruford Arms
Jul 20 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Pinarella, Italy @ Rock Planet Club
Jul 22 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Pilsen, Czech Republic @ Fluff Fest
Jul 23 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Basel, Switzerland @ Sommercasino
Jul 26 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Budapest, Hungary @ Durer Kert
Jul 27 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Vienna, Austria @ Arena
Jul 29 Polar Bear Club Dieburg, Germany @ Traffic Jam Open Air
Jul 30 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Bausendorf, Germany @ Riez Festival
Aug 01 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Hannover, Germany @ Bei Chez Heinz
Aug 02 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Hamburg, Germany @ Hafenklang
Aug 03 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Cologne, Germany @ Blue Shell
Aug 04 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Le Havre, France @ Mac Daids
Aug 06 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)London, United Kingdom @ Bowery
Aug 07 Polar Bear Club (w/ Man Overboard)Kent, United Kingdom @ Hevy Fest