Bear In Heaven w/ Spectrals, Manchester Deaf Institute

Since it opened a few years back as part of the expanding Trof empire, Manchester’s Deaf Institute has quickly garnered a reputation as playing host to some of the hottest, most fashionable new acts from around the world. Support band Spectrals definitely fit this mould, with a sound based on the best of surf rock, but slowed down and chilled out to eerie perfection. Whilst having a lot in common with the current spate of lo-fi artists using sun-drenched riffs and a layer of fuzz to get their point across, the band also have something remarkably timeless about what they do. The vocals sing of love and loss with genuine warmth – notably on ‘It’s Very Sweet Of You To Put Up With Me’ – and there’s enough quality in the foursome to suggest they’ll forge a career no matter which direction the industry takes.

To anyone with a realistic appreciation of the peculiar idiosyncrasies of the music industry at the minute, Bear In Heaven are a successful band. Formed in 2003, they’ve had two full length releases as well as several EPs, whilst the ever-influential Pitchfork gave their latest effort ‘Beast Forth Rest Mouth’ 8.4 out of 10. The fact that the Brooklyn based outfit aren’t trapped to playing local venues and are touring the UK is something that most other bands would love to be able to do.

That Bear In Heaven have no real box into which they can be filed is both a blessing and a curse. Their dark, synth based music is almost without contemporary, but the amount of empty spaces in the crowd can’t all be put down to the Chris Cunningham gig a few miles down the road, but that’s certainly helped. With no real scene to be grouped with, their good work has mainly gone unappreciated, even by the hipster crowd, but, thankfully, they’ve carried on. They’ve certainly got great songs, most pointedly the dual brilliance of the ying and yang of ‘Love Sick Teenagers’ and ‘Casual Goodbye’. With its pulsing, electronic heartbeat, it’s just as captivating live as it is on record, successfully getting a sparse crowd to dance along.

On their less pop moments, there isn’t always that same unity, however. The album tracks don’t transfer quite so well into live performance as they might have done, and the result is a lot of the material ending up sounding similar to what came before it. Brilliant as it is, the pounding, frantic and technical perfection of Joe Stickney’s drumming can only hold the attention for so long, as the band seem to get lost within their own sound, not helped by vocals, such a big part of their recordings, being drowned out in backwash of their percussive sound. Their performance was just as their career has thus far been – steady, if unspectacular, which is a pity considering how breathtaking they can really be.