Of all the bajillions of post-Animal Collective Brooklyn synth-rock bands, Bear in Heaven are maybe the simplest, the most economical. Like all the other bands in that scene, they traffic in hazy, faraway memories and languid longing. Unlike all those other bands, they do it in as few notes as possible, getting in and getting out, leaving you with their basslines reverberating around in your head. Melodically, they keep things as direct as possible: big choruses, propulsive beats, very few wasted moments. In a way, they belong to this whole zoned-out landscape the same way the Cars were a new-wave band. They're classic-pop types happy to dress their shameless, timeless hooks up in the flavor of the day. And in a lot of ways, that makes them ideal remix material.
At this point, we almost don't have to mention how ridiculous it is for these indie rock remix albums to exist. When you round up 10 remixers to play around with one band's output, you're putting together a full-length that, by nature, is going to lack a sense of flow or cohesion. And when you insist that these remixers take on every song on the original album, you're further ensuring a mediocre product. Not every song on Bear in Heaven's great 2009 album Beast Rest Forth Mouth, after all, is on that "Lovesick Teenagers" level; virtually every album ever made has a filler track or five. The best we can hope for from these records is a reasonable, well-curated dance-music compilation with a few unifying threads, and that's basically what we have here.
This particular remix album can claim better existence-justification than most, since it's being sold as a bonus disc on a Beast Rest Forth Mouth reissue rather than as a standalone. It's also a curious little artifact: The rare remix album where the net result is, by and large, less dancefloor-ready than the original album being remixed. Beast Rest isn't exactly a dance album, but it does boast some big, physical grooves; the band has enough disco pedigree that its been covering Lindstrøm and Christabelle's "Lovesick" live lately. But on this remix album, they've recruited a roster of remixers who don't seem particularly interested in housing these tracks up much. Arty club types like the Field and the Hundred in the Hands do show up, but they share equal time with leftfield picks like diffuse exoticists High Places and space-metal mind-expander Justin K. Broadrick. So while it's as spotty as any other remix record, it's at least spotty in interesting ways.
There are some severe lowlights here, like Epstein's smudgy, aimless ruination of "Casual Goodbye" and Brahms' obnoxiously blippy, unimaginative pillage of "Fake Out". But the better remixers here seem to realize that they're dealing with something special. Bear frontman Jon Philpot's voice is a keening, otherworldly tenor that reminds me of Barry Gibb at times, and only the shittiest remixers here bury that voice in effects. Most of them know better. Even the Field, who loves to chop his samples up into unrecognizeable shards only to reveal them at track's end, leaves Philpot relatively intact, letting him flit through the usual slow pulse and keyboard fogbanks. It was bold of Bear to entrust "Dust Cloud", one of their prettiest songs, to a denizen of darkness like Broadrick, but his take works because he treats it like the tenderest moment of a Jesu track, piling on the layers of stretched-out guitars without obscuring the central melody.
But the best remix here is the one that might be even more straightforward than the original track. Pink Skull build on the wounded-kid romanticism of "Wholehearted Mess" by creating a towering synth-disco jam underneath it. The thudding bassline and rippling keyboards and relentless hi-hats interlock perfectly, building and building into a moment of catharsis that disappears too soon. Nine more like this and we'd have a real album on our hands.
