Bear in Heaven is headlining our rock and roll beer festival, The Bay Brewed 2012, this Saturday afternoon, and it’s somehow been the better part of a year since the Brooklyn band last played in the Bay Area. The trio’s most recent SF show was actually the week they released I Love You, It’s Cool, far too long for a group whose albums continue to reward with every subsequent listen.

That feeling of improving with age isn’t because either I Love You, It’s Cool or its predecessor, Beast Rest Forth Mouth, lack immediate pop moments, mind you: see “Sinful Nature,” “Lovesick Teenagers,” and countless other examples from the band’s catalog. But BiH has woven those pop elements into ambitious, genre-mashings songs that draw both from psychedelic rock and experimental electronica. It’s a sound that radiates freedom and possibility, which might also explain why the band continues to draw top-shelf remixers, and why the finished reworkings so frequently hit it out of the park.

With Bear in Heaven’s music, anything is possible, and the group seems intent on keeping it that way. As bandleader Jon Philpot told The Fader:

For better or worse, Bear in Heaven is always changing. Some bands don’t change, often out of a desire to keep their listeners. We’re of the mind that we shouldn’t fight nature’s ever-shifting sands. At this point time, the ground is caving in. We’re years away from who we were when Beast Rest Forth Mouth came out and one year away from when we finished I Love You, it’s Cool. This mixtape is the sound of us deciding whether we should start filling the hole or just dive in. It might be fun, we might not hit bottom. We might fly to the other side of this strange dimension. Will you let us do it? Will you join us? We’re playing some shows in October and December. Come see us stand on the edge.

Purchase your tickets now to catch Bear in Heaven, along with Sonny & The Sunsets, Born Gold, Blasted Canyons, James & Evander, and Trails and Ways, and unlimited beer tasting from 13 SF Brewers Guild breweries at The Bay Brewed 2012!