Dalliance by Gold-Bears (review)

Back in 2014, I wrote about a dozen record reviews for a website called Buzz and Howl. It was later hacked and disappeared into the ether. This is one in a series of posts intended to preserve that work, unedited. 

Gold-Bears, Dalliance 

Gold-Bears are a band that seem all-but-engineered, or maybe just destined, to be on Slumberland Records. The contemporaries to whom they are most often compared are current labelmates the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and Jeremy Underwood--who pretty much is Gold-Bears--claims Boyracer as one of the two bands he couldn’t live without. Pam Berry, from Slumberland founder Mike Schulman’s band (and my favorite on their roster) Black Tambourine, shows up to bless the proceedings on one of the many highlights of Gold-Bears new LP, Dalliance. That track, “From Tallahassee to Gainesville,” seems to be at least partially about those long conversations you sometimes have on roadtrips; smart conversations with smart people that end up making you feel dumb. These types of golden invocations of bittersweet memories is what Dalliance is all about. On the surface it’s all exuberance, and then you listen closer and realize they’re singing about pain and regret.

Although Underwood apparently assembled an entirely different band between the release of this record and the first, Gold-Bears pick up right where they left off on Are You Falling In Love?--literally, with a song called “Yeah, Tonight.” And then they explode into “Chest,” which is adorned with some beautifully simple “bah-bah-bah” backing vocals that arrive at exactly the right moment, in this case at about two-thirds of the way through the song. We’re shy of five minutes total running time when the third tune comes crashing in just as insistently. And then (again, at exactly the right moment) comes “I Hope They’re Right,” a much-needed breather in terms of album sequencing, giving us exactly the sonic space to regroup after three breakneck opening tunes. It’s beautiful in its own right, layering great swaths of My Bloody Valentine-style noise tracks deep in the mix behind pretty acoustic guitar and prettier vocals.

Underwood is able to pack a whole lot of feeling, sentiment, and lyrical detail into one-to-one-and-a-half-minute tunes like “Memo” or “Punk Song No. 15,” the latter of which, especially, is designed to be listened to over and over, and is destined to be the kickoff track of many a future mixtape. But you don’t mind when the songs stick around a little longer, either, as with the more modestly paced “Hey, Sophie.” (And let’s face it, 2014 needed an indie-pop song called “Hey, Sophie,” so check that one off the list.) In another great bit of sequencing--clearly one of Underwood’s strengths--the sweetness of that track, reportedly about his daughter, is washed away by the sour bite of “For You,” which starts out with an addled voice hollering, “Your mistake!” and continues to detail bitterness and regret. But, as ever, the music here pulls against the lyrics, endlessly complicating its emotional impact. Call it the Smiths’ effect.

It’s a raw bunch of songs, in the emotional sense, and without the melodies sweetening the bitter into the bittersweet, we might not be able to take it all in one sitting. But, instead, after playing Gold-Bears’ latest all the way through, we feel exhilarated. We hit play again, knowing that in another half-hour we’ll have felt all these things all over again. And it’s in this way that Dalliance demonstrates one of the things that makes pop music great, something so fundamental that we occasionally need reminding of it: good pop makes pain catchy.