"Remember that night in 1993? That song made you weep. How could you be so mean, to the boy you longed to meet?" This is the first line of "Besides You", a late-album beauty on Are You Falling in Love?, the debut LP from Atlanta indie poppers Gold-Bears. A little bit emo, a little bit twee, this one lyric is actually striking more for its date-dropping than than its emotional overtones. It fits really well. These four share a lot of DNA with Slumberland labelmates the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. But where the latter initially couched their melodies in the "noise" of late-80s noise-pop (they've since swapped that out for the sear of Smashing Pumpkins' guitar squall), Gold-Bears favor the dreamy, moody, semi-blurry sounds Yo La Tengo built their reputation on in the early to mid-90s. All waves of revivalism and nostalgia aside, Are You Falling Love? sounds like it was beamed in straight from 1993.
The band works within this particular framework exceedingly well. "Record Store" is a tear-streaked, full-tilt opener that leaves a whole lot of foam and fizz in its wake. "So Natural" boasts equal amounts of verve, save for a gentle bell melody in its second half. From there the title track coasts into a field of drone, a psychedelic space where Gold-Bears set themselves apart from a lot of their contemporaries. There's no shortage of energy here-- this band can zoom from one row of jangly, interlocking guitar melodies to the next, the sax-laced "East Station Attendant" and sugary peaks of "Totally Called It" one particularly great mark-- but when they make room to fuck around more intensely with volume and texture, the results can dazzle.
Chief songwriter Jeremy Underwood doesn't leave a lot unsaid, packing his poetry in very tightly. And whether or not you've got a heart for the relatively twee, lovesick couplets he's letting loose, a change of pace suits him well. He sings the first several bars of closer "Yeah, Tonight" cloaked in echo, an acoustic guitar rattling around at his fingers. There's some word-blurring kick drum and a few spears of guitar noise sent through negative space, but for the most part, this is a stripped down version of most everything else you'll find here. But as this song gains momentum, it blooms into a less strained iteration of what they already do well. "Tonight we'll fall in love and love again," Underwood coos just before he up and pulls a Malkmus: "And then the drums come in..." What happens next is a lot like Gold-Bears and Are You Falling in Love?: a pleasant surprise.
