Bear in Heaven are a difficult band to describe, which actually made them easy to categorize at one point. When Animal Collective was indie rock’s undisputed, reigning MVP in 2009, a record like Beast Rest Forth Mouth could elevate a promising prospect to All-Star status: there was a demand for bands that were percussive and electronic with some basis in rock-band composition, bearing boyish vocals that were still handsome and masculine. The Brooklyn-via-Atlanta trio, like most in their position, got more urbane and technophilic on their follow-up I Love You, It’s Cool, a solid record but also a holding pattern that established staying power at the sake of artistic momentum. Animal Collective's 2012 album Centipede Hz clearly signaled the end of an indie rock era, so Bear in Heaven have more incentive and maybe even a necessity to define themselves on their own terms. And in a way, Time Is Over One Day Old does that—if you've kept up with them to this point, you know it’s Bear in Heaven that you're listening to—but while they remain difficult to describe, in this context, it’s for less flattering reasons. In 2014, it's hard to say what makes Bear in Heaven stand out.
As it turns out, that still makes Time Is Over One Day Old easy to categorize—as with Yeasayer and Hooray For Earth’s most recent releases, it’s a notable example of a band ostensibly trying to figure out where they fit in as festival-going indie fans have simultaneously embraced more esoteric material alongside the most overt pop and R&B. So Time Is Over One Day Old comes across as being not quite centrist enough to qualify as pop, but nowhere near experimental enough to appeal to the fringe. In the current state, Bear in Heaven’s left-of-center translates to “middle of the road.”
Of all the things Time Is Over One Day Old strips away from Bear in Heaven, foremost is the upward propulsion. The tone of the band's rhythm section is strapping and muscular, yet most of these songs begin by finding a cruising speed and end with Bear in Heaven having maintained a straight line throughout. Upon arriving at their choruses, “Time Between” and “Memory Heart” are given the chance to take the same thrilling leap as “Lovesick Teenagers” and “Ultimate Satisfaction”, but they politely demur and step back. “If I Were to Lie” and “Demons” bear interesting texture and try to work up same perpetual motion as “The Reflection of You”, but they end up simply running in place.
Even in their earliest days, Bear in Heaven were more economical and precise than their peers, so it’s not surprising that their leanest album yet reveals what often amounts to a prim and trim krautrock band. Jon Philpot’s diction is clean and legible, his melodies are clearly enunciated, and opener “Autumn” sounds like a distant, colorless cousin of Caribou’s The Milk of Human Kindness. When Bear in Heaven steer off-track, the results are intriguing but unrealized: “Time Between” attaches itself to an alt-hip-hop beat distractingly similar to Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away”, and halfway through “They Dream”, Bear in Heaven veer off into a beatless coda that stops Time completely. When “Way Off” and “Dissolve the Walls” make similar moves toward the record’s closure, Bear in Heaven sound like they're running on fumes.
Still, Time Is Over One Day Old knows how to fill a room. It’s tasteful, electronic indie as ambient music, and when you lean into it, it rarely pushes back. The evenness of Philpott’s delivery ensures that lines such as “You told me lies and I believed you”, “Suicide or stay alive...you decide to stay alive hopeless as a virgin”, and “Holy cluster fuck, you love a lot” all register at the same level of impact. Meanwhile, the uncanny, luminous production of “The Sun and the Moon and the Stars” puts it at odds with Philpot muttering with stony casualness, “the sun and the moon and the stars are hanging out with me.” On Time Is Over One Day Old, any emotional extreme or attempted musical shift just ends up sounding like stasis.
