Bear In Heaven : Beast Rest Forth Mouth

<span style="font-style: normal"><img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/bearinheavenbestrest.jpg" alt=" " />Someone should take a Polaroid of the U.K. music scene now, because after Brooklyn's Bear In Heaven drops </span><i>Beast Rest Forth Mouth</i><span style="font-style:...
8.8 Hometapes
2010 

Bear In Heaven : Beast Rest Forth Mouth Since their first full-length album, the expansive and ambitious Red Bloom of the Boom (QRO review), Bear in Heaven has trimmed its membership down to four members.  Whether due to the consequent consolidation of ideas or simply dumb luck, their latest release Beast Rest Forth Mouth certainly feels like a more focused effort.  Bear In Heaven is the sort of band that gives you the impression of complete confidence in their sound.  They know exactly what buttons to push, levers to pull, and wheels to turn, in ten songs full of electronic grandeur and dark glamour.  The younger Bear In Heaven offered the listener an occasional ‘peak behind the existential curtain’, so to speak, in their moments of indecision.  The band behind Beast Rest Forth Mouth fails to expose a single chink in the armor.  The result is an album that, at its heights, boasts some of the most starkly beautiful passages of plugged-in, turned-on gothica in recent memory.

It’s standard operating procedure nowadays that bands rely on synths as mere filler for otherwise hollow compositions.  Synths as sonic wallpaper.  Few bands, surprisingly, take advantage of the synth keyboards native abilities.  The Arcade Fire of Neon Bible (QRO review) have figured it out, and Bear In Heaven are right there with them.  The intrigue of synth keyboards stems not from their ultra-modernity, but from their ability to mimic the lush aural reverberations produced by vaulted ceilings and stone masonry.  Cathedrals, synagogues and mosques are fantastic soundspaces – and they were the only venue in town for thousands of years if you wanted to hear music performed.  Note that pop music only really took off in the mid-20th century in America (which never had any history of cathedral building to speak of) and in Europe (after two World Wars bombed the wealth of cathedrals into oblivion).  Since then artists have been feverishly doctoring up and ‘Wall of Sound’-ing their sound: to what end?  To regain that divine reverberation.  Synth keyboards pick out something primordial and transcendent in the soul when used properly.  Bear In Heaven milks the effect with gusto.  There is a strange brooding undertow to Beast Rest Forth Mouth that situates the listener in the midst of dark rites half-respected, half-feared, and never fully understood.  Suffice it to say Bear In Heaven won’t be covering "MMMBop" anytime soon.

The ceremony begins with opener "Beast in Peace".  Simple, savage drumming ushers in a mantric voice: you can practically see the virgin being dragged before the altar.  Then the keyboards unfold into a limitless krautrock vista to the drop-dead bad-ass lyric "Don’t bother leaving / You’re already gone."  It’s something Judd Nelson might have tossed off in Breakfast Club.  Bear In Heaven have a lyrical gift for adolescent trauma which, altars and incense aside, keeps the album within the indie rock sphere.  They can also craft a mean synth hook.  The end of "Wholehearted Mess" flows directly into "You Do You" (a single take?) for one of the coolest synth lines you might ever hear.  In fact, the trio of songs that makes up the heart of the album – "You Do You", "Lovesick Teenagers" and "Ultimate Satisfaction" – sounds like a ‘greatest hits’ collection and reminds you why people loved the New Wave.  Most bands would be psyched to have one of these songs on their album: Beast Rest Forth Mouth is an embarrassment of riches.

Outside of the gothtronica, Bear In Heaven ratchets up the krauttronica on tracks "Wholehearted Mess" and "Dust Cloud".  The latter is a dead ringer for your favorite NEU! tune.  Germanisms are hidden here and there all over the album.  The real influence of krautrock, however, is more subtle and pervasive than a few shoplifted sonic nuggets.  Bear In Heaven is attracted to the wide-open sounds of the great NEU! and Can albums, where guitars chugged on for miles and miles across minimalist rock landscapes.  When Bear In Heaven writes a hook it may not be the sort of hook that you can hum, a-la MGMT (QRO live review).  The hooks aren’t hastily consumed like so many Snickers bars; they are felt in a full-bodied way as if one had just been tossed into fierce alien terrain.  The descending keyboard progression towards the end of "Deafening Love" gathers an alluring, foreign strength through repetition without submitting to gimmickry.  Occasionally the windups outweigh the payoff, like on "Drug a Wheel", when you keep waiting for the song to start (then discover it’s over).  For the most part, though, the batting average is extraordinarily high.

Beast Rest Forth Mouth is an album that is bound to exert an influence over the scene.  A lot of bands are using synths but very few are using them quite so effectively.  That means a lot of keyboards are just sitting around not doing much except trying to imitate the "Kids" hook.  The time is ripe for someone to come along and show the kids what else can be done with the instrument (and how to use it in an ensemble of other instruments, rather than as the cruel, slave-driving overseer of the entire composition!).  Bear In Heaven – with monumental songs and the attitude to boot – could be that band.  This effect might be all the more noticeable given the lag between the U.S. and U.K. release dates of the album.  America has had time to appreciate Bear In Heaven, but the U.K. hasn’t.  Someone should take a Polaroid of the U.K. music scene now, because after Beast Rest Forth Mouth drops, it’s not going to be the same.

MP3 Stream: "Ultimate Satisfaction"

{audio}/mp3/files/Bear In Heaven – Ultimate Satisfaction.mp3{/audio}

 

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