Album Review: Bear In Heaven – I Love You, It’s Cool

Bear In Heaven - I Love You, It's Cool

Album Review: Bear In Heaven – I Love You, It’s Cool
March 2, 2012
by Chuck Norton

After months of waiting, I finally got an advance copy of Bear In Heaven‘s new album, I Love You, It’s Cool that will hit the streets on April 3, 2012.

My initial reaction? It’s fantastic. It is what I thought music was going to sound like in 2012, in 1997. And that’s a good thing.

The New York band’s follow-up to their break-out, 2010 album, Beast Rest Forth Mouth, may be an early contender for album of the year. It’s a slight departure from their last album, with a retro-futurist sound that isn’t out of place in 2012, but doesn’t have many audible bed-fellows.

The album is lush, layered and fun; even when it brings in elements of dark wave. It sounds like a band who gave in to guilty pleasures, and in doing so, made an album free of pretention and full of explosiveness.

I’ve always sucked at doing a technical break-down of an album – it isn’t my strong suit. But my personal, emotional reaction was full-on bliss. The last album I heard something that got me this excited was Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs. This album is nothing like that – it’s closer to a M83 album than an Arcade Fire one – but’s got all the elements that thrust the ex-pats from Alabama and Georgia to that rare air.

All of the track are strong, although “Cool Lights” is an early favorite as is “World of Freakout” which sounds like it could have been an early-’90′s Pet Shop Boys track. The first single, “The Reflection of You” is obviously another highlight. The album’s final track, “Sweetness and Sickness” is slow and brooding, reminding me a bit of Ride, while sounding only remotely like them.

This album gets as high of an initial reaction and recommendation as I could give. It’s an album I’d not only recommend, but one I’ll buy for myself and for someone else.