The latest album from Tampa's own New Granada Records comes via recent addition, Sunbears!. The Jacksonville duo — Jonathan Berlin (vocals, bass, guitar, keys, synths) and Jared Bowser (drums, percs) — has been most often likened to Flaming Lips, and while You Will Live Forever is clearly influenced by that particular band's lush and dramatic quality of psyche pop, Sunbears! has imbued their full-length debut with their uniquely vibrant modern rock experimentation, delivering 13 songs of dreamy cascading pop loveliness and grandiose walls of iridescent hallucinogenic sound.
Hand claps and textured big beat percussion reminiscent of the '60s, some '70s groovin' piano-and-bass swagger, and a healthy dose of Sunbears! pop-tronic finesse is enhanced with various bright sonic embellishments (rising strings and wordless chorales, bell tolls, glocks rings) and the heart-squeezing sweet vocal delivery of Berlin.
Recorded at NYC's Singing Serpent Studios with frequent Florida band producer Jeremy S.H. Griffith, You Will Live Forever goes from the upbeat infectious plea of "Give Love a Try," to poignant introspection in "Together Forever" with its light touch of strings, keys and swaying bass, segues into "Psychic Numbing Is Evil!" and its ominous-becomes-hopeful ascension of vocals and guitar, eventually reaches the meaning-of-life musings and synth dance-bounce of "The Uncertainty Paradigm," and finally comes to a climactic end in "Live! Don’t Stop Trying!" which closes with gently winding strings and acoustic guitar.
An album brimming with so much sentimentality and musings on life could make for a hippy dippy saccharine affair, but Sunbears! come off as completely natural and refreshingly sincere, the album an overall impressive and triumphant first effort. 4 Stars
Sunbears! play a CD release show with Hume on Wed., Nov. 23, at New World Brewery, Ybor City; doors at 9 p.m. Tickets are $8.
