Time is Over One Day Old
10 years of Bear in Heaven's fourth album, plus meditations on the hopes and woes of temporality
on August 5, 2014, the band Bear in Heaven released their fourth studio album, Time is Over One Day Old, on the indie record label Dead Oceans. i was introduced to this album via my college’s radio station and fell in love with the melancholic and meandering grooves of songs such as “If I Were to Lie,” “They Dream,” “The Sun and the Moon and the Stars,” and “You Don’t Need the World.”
around this time, i was new to record collecting. so far, i’d purchased 2 by Mac DeMarco, II by Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and a small assortment of secondhand records from decades gone by. i played them on the all-in-one entertainment center that my grandma had purchased for me as a gift for “going away to college.” is it really going away if it’s just moving downtown and you can take a couple of buses to be home again?
anyway, i purchased Time is Over One Day Old, not knowing much about this band. admittedly, i still don’t know all that much about them besides the fact that they’re originally from Atlanta (but were based in Brooklyn) and that this was the last album they put out. what i did know at the time was that i loved the design of the vinyl, with its white-and-blue splatter colorway. years later, something about capturing this record against the bright green grass made me see it in a different light.
the cover art has a photo of constellations centered in the middle of a heavily textured white wall. the picture is peeling up and away from the surface and the illuminated night sky contrasts with the starkness of the shiny white paint. i think about the tedium of “watching paint dry.” how it sounds mind-numbing to most, but could be therapeutic or oddly satisfying to others. i also think about the tendency to paint over things we don’t like. how many layers of texture and color sit underneath that new coat? and what happens when the paint is too thick to dry neatly?
this 10-year anniversary review is over one day old. i meant to post this yesterday, but i was prompted to rest upon waking with a pounding headache. i napped a couple of times, so perhaps i worked out some residual resistance to the subject matter in my dreams. i also attended
’s monthly writer’s circle this past Sunday, in which we reflected on the theme of fear. admittedly, i didn’t know what to write during that virtual call. i tried working on this piece, but couldn’t find the exact words. instead, i pulled cards for my new moon reading and traced the few words i did write over and over again on paper.
often, when i’ve written about fear before, it was in tandem with transmuting it into excitement. so i did reflect on that during the meditative gathering. i also thought about how the fear of missing an anniversary can rush the thoughtfulness of a review. or conversely, how you can sit with something for too long because you think ruminating will magically give you the words, when our bodies often need us to follow other mundane prompts and signals to keep that creative fire going. get up from that desk! make that meal! clean that clutter in the corner! go lay down! the spark will be there when you’re truly ready.
sure, i had identified Time is Over One Day Old as an album with an upcoming milestone anniversary months ago. but then the date snuck up on me, and i found myself having only listened to it a couple of times without a specific direction to guide my writing. i had anticipated the work i put out last month so intensely that it hasn’t left me with much urgency for this month.1 i have to rest and reclaim some of that energy. with the prompt from the writer’s circle in mind, however, i was inspired to listen to the record once more and analyze how it possibly engages with the concept of fear. i discovered that in many ways, the album breathes life into fear, then suffocates it in order to resurrect hope.
as mentioned in a press release, “this album isn’t about being dark, it’s about releasing darkness and frustration.” many of the lyrics possess a contemplative quality, but it’s more expansive than limiting. the singer Jon Philpot went on to say that there was “a lot of shedding, getting rid of layers and preconceptions…breaking up with old ways of thinking, old ways of being, starting to look at this thing in a new way, and finding something positive.”2 in this way, fear does not have room to completely control the narrative on this album. sure, it has an occupancy, but it doesn’t have the same space to reverberate as it might have without this kind of introspection.
genre-wise, Time is Over One Day Old fits well into the pocket of other neo-psychedelic, experimental electro-pop with a tenor singing lead that i was listening to during the 2010s. is it my favorite record i’ve ever heard? no. did it stick with me, as suggested in the press release? well, yes. it’s the type of music that echoes in your mind at 3 PM and also at 1 AM, but for different reasons. what strikes you is the audacity to explore the in-betweens and beyond of our human feelings and experiences. it’s music you have to have patience to engage with. not just with its unexpected twists and turns, but patience with yourself for what listening may expose about you.
melodically, this album is slinky and slithery in all the same ways that it’s neat and direct. there’s a precision to the discordance. the hesitation doesn’t persist, but a demand for honesty does (as heard on “Time Between” and “If I Were to Lie).” the opening of the album somewhat mirrors my current experience with talk of “Autumn” pounding in one’s chest and laying down to rest. sure, i feel the summer slipping away from me, as it does seemingly every year.
that’s a common experience when your birthday falls in the middle of the actual summer, but summer’s wanderlust is waning as people return from vacation and students retreat back to school. Old Navy stops selling you flip-flops and instead puts preppy collared shirts and slacks on display. it’s the summertime sadness of existing in the time between. here comes the fear that you didn’t spend enough time in the warm sun, so you soak up a little extra with each encounter that follows. yet, the sun sets earlier and earlier every passing day, so you already miss it more and more.
as the album progresses, “They Dream” feels like the first time you tell someone you love them. the way the words can linger in your throat for quite some time until you have no choice but to spit them out, clumsily even. and if the feeling is mutual, you wonder what all that fear was for?
And he really loves her
And he stands unsure
Of himself
And she really loves him
And she thinks about them
— “They Dream”
one of my favorite tracks, “The Sun and the Moon and the Stars” reminds me of the moments when you sit with how simultaneously vast and small your existence is. how cool is it that you exist here at this specific moment in time? how awestruck are you when you look at the trees and see the macrocosm within the microcosm, or vice versa? reflecting on the lyric “the sun and the moon and the stars, they’re hanging out with me” reminds me that i am not separate from the stars. that i am made of the same matter and nothing is ever created or destroyed, so i have been here plenty of times before, just not in this form. it’s a sort of ontological memory. the sun, moon, and stars mirror the mind, body, and spirit.
Now we’re 30,000 miles from the outside
and we’re never going back again
If you ever heard of once in a lifetime
This is it, oh this is it
— “The Sun and The Moon and The Stars”
overall, Time Is Over One Day Old explores the possibilities of moving beyond limitations. of sitting with your shadow side and not being cloaked by its darkness, but instead being thankful that its shape was illuminated by the light. being honored that you can give the silhouette a name, but not have to wear its symbol of despair on your sleeve daily.
it’s about moving beyond the walls you’ve built up and letting them dissolve completely until all that’s left is the foundation. what if you took the time to honor the building that once stood before you instead of rushing to rebuild it? what if you saw the destruction not only as a clean slate, but rather pieces to be reshaped instead of ruins to be swept away? what if you didn’t discard all the parts that existed before and incorporated them meaningfully into who you are now?
Let the walls dissolve
Till there’s no room at all
There’s no ceiling, no floor
No windows, no door
— “Dissolve The Walls”
and what does the title actually mean? i guess i never really spent much time reflecting on it until now. i kind of just took it at face value. but there’s something very “you exist in the context of all in which you live and came before you” about it. perhaps it’s about being situated in a specific moment in time and allowing the fragility of that reality to propel you forward.
the album closes with a reminder that we don’t necessarily need the external world for validation. like seeing galaxies within myself, the external can be a mirror for what we experience internally. it can show us a positive image or one we’d rather hide in the corner and drape with a sheet. but how often do we honor the natural world for authentically reflecting us back to ourselves? in what ways can we offer ourselves validation and comfort? in what ways can time assist with that process?
i bought an hourglass when i went thrifting on my birthday, and every time i flip it over, it feels like a chance to pivot and reset. similarly, the album’s back cover shows a mound of sand on a wooden plank next to some spilled paint. i think this may be a statement about some of the ways that we measure time, but also that all is not lost. and from these simple materials, there is an opportunity to build anew and start the clock all over again.
by the end of the album, one can process a different relationship to time and how it existed during the 43-minute runtime. i left each listening session with the same favorites i came in with, but my understanding of the whole album was enhanced by giving myself the grace to sit with it a little bit longer. and the words were always there. they were just waiting for me to get out of my own head so they had more space to roam free.
i also anticipated this being a slower month as i have something major in the works for September 👀