This bear might be in heaven, but it won’t ever die. That’s the main point to take away from the UK hard-copy release of these Brooklyn indie-rockers’ sophomore LP. Where their dreamy 2009 peers Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective have long since gone overplayed, Beast Rest Forth Mouth still sounds fresh and oracular, simultaneously pleading and championing for a shift in sonic texture that now stands in relief of other 2010 sibilators like Beach House, Liars, or Yeasayer.
Using Beach House’s Teen Dream as a point of reference a year later, it’s hard not to see Victoria LeGrand’s haunting, sometimes mannish vocals as a response to Bear in Heaven’s sometimes womanly vocalist Jon Philpot. Even if you don’t hear it, it’s hard to deny the pounding rhythm elaborated on at the end of lead track “Beast in Peace”. It’s at that point where Bear in Heaven’s combined guitars, bass, drums, and meandering vocals cohere, and in spite of its title, it’s a rampaging elephant of an opener.
But Bear in Heaven’s lyricism describes grandiose themes like “Ultimate Satisfaction” and “Lovesick Teenagers”. The latter, their lead single, resounds of ruin and desolation: “Drowning away from the rubble… Before we crash into the ground,” while, as one fan pointed out, the former could conceivably be about masturbation (references abound in the lyrics). Bear in Heaven isn’t easily identified and in many ways that seems to be the point. The band doesn’t make pop songs per se, and it doesn’t make dance-y music, despite pronounced, crushing beats that predict not necessarily the energy, but certainly the strength of Brooklyn buzzers Sleigh Bells.
It’s also important to note that this elephant has a full, unrelenting backing band. The trick is in their mix of live and electronic instrumentation, which blend and fill each other out in the production to form a sound that never feels tapped. The key is in the way they supplement each other. When the many drum-fills in “Casual Goodbye” audibly give way to light cymbal taps, Bear in Heaven pulls an ’80s keyboard line into the mix, highlighting Philpot singing about “crash[ing] into the ground.” At the end, the closing track ends abruptly — as soon as its chorus does.
Like Liars, Bear in Heaven had this latest album remixed, packaging it as an exclusive free addition to its US reissue. Like Liars, their remixed edition was criticized for its perceived boredom. Like Liars, Bear in Heaven had a plethora of guests on its remix, including High Places and the dude from Jesu. Interestingly enough, like Liars, this remix album was kind of boring (a) compared to most other remix albums, and (b) compared to the original. What’s funniest is that it seems plenty don’t realize how boring both these bands really are: They focus on texture and landscape, not on pulling the dance out of hipsters the world over.
And therein lies Bear in Heaven’s mystique. For the most part, it comes across as a band without an agenda, and yet one whose work has coded so many other artists’ in its scene. Beast Rest Forth Mouth takes more listening than is comfortable sometimes, but its sound is nonetheless physical, and personified through its incessancy. “Casual Goodbye” closes Beast Rest Forth Mouth in the best way possible because if it wasn’t abrupt, it would lose steam. And that can’t happen.
