Following a growing trend, Minus the Bear is another name on the list of bands bridging the gap between outputs with an album of guest musicians’ remixes.

While a posthumous new take on a release can serve as icing on a short-lived cake (Test Icicles, Death from Above 1979), dropping a remix disc makes little sense while a band is alive and theoretically kicking (The Gossip, Bloc Party, Interpol, Cities). It raises too many questions about a band’s muse, the members’ productivity, and ultimately causes an inevitable and easily avoided comparison to the original tracks.

Thus, “Interpretaciones Del Oso” ­­- made up of remixes of 2005’s “Menos el Oso” – draws otherwise unnecessary retrospective criticism onto that original work.

It’s impossible to hear “The Pig War” and not contrast the previous snazzy, upbeat track with riding high hats to the now-droning slew of vocals. Or to listen to the 2007 version of “Hooray” – a childlike dance tune stocked full of Nintendo-like beats – and not hearken back to the original darkly somber rock’n’roll track. And while “El Torrente” was first a simple, almost whimsically ambient track, it is now an industrially murky collection of bangs and fuzzy clatter.

In fact, the remixes on “Interpretaciones” are so different from their predecessors that it seems like the Seattle quartet gave the various guest producers/DJs only one guideline – to make the new tracks as unrelated to that 2005 album as possible. The problem, however, is that this apparent lack of boundaries spawned a spastic and schizophrenic go-round. The 11 tracks have no direction or any coherent thread beyond the fact that they have already been recorded once before – better – with rocking guitars and banging snares.

Which may pay off for Minus the Bear in the long run. Because now that 2005 output sounds even better, and the group’s next release is certain to be more impressive than this.