Photo courtesy of C-Side Records

Opening with a punchy riff, Golden Bear’s “Borrowed Beginnings” only hints at where the song’s going in its first minute. When it cuts the tempo to half-time and and the xylophone starts chiming in the background, it becomes clear that you’re in for a full-fledged power-pop epic.

“That’s definitely something we were going for when we were recording,” the band’s frontman, Chris Gregory, explains. “The song is one of our live mainstays that never goes out of rotation – a lot of it’s instrumental, and it definitely has that big, epic feel to it.”

While the song is fairly sunny, fitting in with the Austin band’s pop leanings, Gregory says that the riff the song is built around was inspired by an unlikely source. “I had just bought this really cool old MXR distortion pedal, and I was trying to make this almost AC/DC-sounding thing, with a lot of open strings on all the time.” It’s hard to imagine Bon Scott taking on this sort of Arcade Fire-y material, but Golden Bear proves itself more than capable of blending its disparate influences into something special.

Golden Bear’s third album, Alive, is out October 18 on C-Side Records.