Bear In Heaven are yet another one of these "Brooklyn Indie Bands" that are essentially synth-rock outfits, all reverb and as Pitchfork notes, digitization. Well, I love their new album, just out, I Love You, It's Cool. Fresh as new paint from Tom Sawyer's brush, the songs answer the question, what would happen if Animal Collective went back in time and fused with Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears. You'd get loping, emotive, ultra-cool synth songs with just a bit more dreampop shiver-shimmer, sung in an American key of boyish yearning. 'Sinful Nature' and 'The Reflection of You' are two of the best indie pop songs you'll hear in 2012, or 1982.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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