Dalliance, the second record from Atlanta quintet Gold-Bears, is the sound of a guitar band figuring out how much fun it can be without becoming a bore. Endearing lines about young love and fond memories are parceled with energetic hooks, exuberant cymbal crashes, and singer Jeremy Underwood’s dogged yelp. It’s an immensely present and viscerally enjoyable album, caught in the moment without a second to spare.
In his Pitchfork review of their debut album, 2011's Are You Falling in Love?, David Bevan noted the similarities between Gold-Bears and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, another Slumberland alum burying honeyed melodies underneath layers of fuzz like a precious gem wrapped in tissue paper. Pains have adjusted to their upwardly scaled ambitions by toning back the distortion, while Gold-Bears have headed in the other direction: Dalliance is thicker, as its guitars squeal into a heady, enveloping rush without losing fizzy pop effervescence. Underwood’s voice leaps from the mix, revealing him as another entrancingly nasal pop-punk pugilist along the lines of the Thermals’ Hutch Harris.
There are heartfelt truths revealed in the lyrics, but Gold-Bears are most apt at communicating a feeling with just a few seconds at their disposal. “Yeah, Tonight” is packed with knowing lines about what the night might hold, but the urgent refrain says everything you need to know. You could listen to how “Chest” describes a complicated love, or let the wistful harmonies at the end do all the work. A song like “From Tallahassee to Gainesville” sets an intimate scene (”On our way from Tallahassee to Gainesville/ We listen to songs in the dark/ Somehow you convince me that we weren’t really that smart”) before riding a few pregnant pauses and the eternally sweet “Be My Baby” drum beat toward a breathy denouement.
Dalliance is a noise-pop record in an era where there's plenty of noise-pop bands made up of people who grew up listening to noise-pop bands—an obvious modern-day analog is Joanna Gruesome, another Slumberland act who are thanked in the liner notes—and the obviousness of their influences can be noted both with a charitable nod or dismissive wave of the hand. “It’s not like I wake up and say, ‘Man, I can’t wait to write a song that may sound like it was written in the 90s,’” Underwood once said in an interview. “It just sort of happens.” Still, Gold-Bears are sharp enough to catch your attention, as evidenced in the way “For You” opens with a big yell of “You’re a mistake!” before progressing to sparkling outro awash with chimes and white noise, or how Underwood’s insistent vocal pulls “Memo” together on sheer effort, or the bleary, romantic finale of “Hey Sophie”. Dalliance is the sound of a good band tightening to the point where they become something greater.
