Starting with steady, straightforward drumming and buried bass,
Bear in Heaven almost sound like a less complicated
Can on their second album,
Beast Rest Forth Mouth, something the quiet, dreamy vocals don't immediately counteract. In a way, this makes the sudden interjection of power chords and a distinctly familiar tinge to the singing a bit of a comedown -- if mainstream prog crossed with woozy
MBV-and-everything-after guitar is the latest place for indie to end up, then it apparently has to have a gloss on it that assumes that it was invented by
Wayne Coyne (albeit midwived by
Jon Anderson). The album as a whole doesn't quite escape this fluctuating role -- to its benefit as well as detriment -- while all too defiantly lodged in a sonic place that assumes electronics in pop stopped a number of years ago, say around the time of the original shoegazers. Sometimes the recombination of random impulses creates odd, enjoyable moments, like the shuddering, strange flow of "You Do You," with vocals echoing down a chorus along with the guitars, the watery percussion echo on "Drug a Wheel," or the compressed snarl and woozy swirl of "Ultimate Satisfaction." One feels a sense of stasis for all the recombination, though, an idea that this is as far as the band can either get, or is willing to get -- an extension of past sounds instead of fully engaging with the musical lingua franca of now. Not too surprising given rock's endless possibilities for self-regard, but even so, a little frustrating somehow.