Free and legal MP3 from Bear in Heaven (indie rock from Brooklyn, at once driven and spacey)

"Lovesick Teenagers" - Bear in Heaven
     Can a song be spacey and determined at the same time? "Lovesick Teenagers" seems to manage this unusual effect. Determination is heard through the relentless pulse of the snare-free beat along with front man Jon Philpot's purposeful tenor, which sounds like someone with a wavery voice trying not to waver. And the melody itself seems also to possess an endearing sort of tenaciousness in the way it keeps leaping up a fourth on every syllable it seeks to emphasize.
     But the spaciness too comes in various guises. Echoey, rocket-like synthesizers, sure. You'll hear those right away. But it's also there in the synth's ongoing throb, which moves at twice the pace of the drumbeat, and lends a sci-fi-cartoon-iness to the proceedings. The chorus, when it arrives, arrives in a wash of psychedelic effects--soaring synths, fuzzed-up vocals, glitchy accents--even though, if you listen, you'll see that the driving drumbeat persists underneath it all. And look how the song's final moment pretty much encapsulates the underlying aural paradox, being at once the epitome of driving determination--a "sting," as we used to call it in radio (meaning a sharp, abrupt ending)--and moony vagueness, since the sting echoes afterwards with the faintest of synthetic wind sounds.
     Bear in Heaven is a quartet of Southerners who landed in Brooklyn and have been recording since 2003. "Lovesick Teenagers" is a song from Beast Rest Forth Mouth, the band's third album, released this month on Hometapes Records.