Gold-Bears

Totally fell for this album, which has just enough fuzz and scratch and boom to make the tunes stick...

Gold-Bears

Are You Falling In Love?

(Slumberland)

There are lots of precedents for a record like Are You In Love?, the debut from Atlanta’s Gold-Bears. You can start with their label-mates in The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, who, on their first album especially, set the template for this sort of fizz-popped euphoria. You might draw in Wild Nothing, who cleaned and polished the concept to a fine gloss, or Yuck, who strung out and drawled and fogged over their pretty songs, as if beauty itself was kind of a bore. Cloud Nothings could come up, too, since their infectious balance of twitch and swoon, of swagger and sensitivity, is much like the Gold-Bears. And that’s just the current crop, never mind their forebears in bands like Guided by Voices, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Pavement and so on. The point is that, in conceptual terms at least, Are You In Love? breaks no new ground. And yet, even within defined parameters, this album overfills its boundaries, exceeds whatever limitations the genre sets and explodes with energy. It comes across as altogether fresh, irresistible even, on the strength of its outsized personality, eccentric sweetness and rambunctious hooks.

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