When I hear the natural gallop of Inheaven’s “Bitter Town,” I’m immediately reminded of last summer. During those days, working my soul-sucking seasonal job as a custodian, I found a sense of buoyancy in a select few songs. I might as well have been shuffling across some 1980s college radio station, with early U2 trading licks with the likes of “In a Big Country” and the Replacements. They were songs with a sense of restlessness, whose guitars danced around scales and whose productions were lush without ever dipping into the gaudiness of pop rock power ballads.
Inheaven’s “Bitter Town” is a lot like those songs. The verses could be hooks with their melodic command. The vocals yell across late night MTV like a youthfully eager battle cry. The instrumentation is raspy but precise. “Bitter Town” echoes with a hazy suburban disconnect. I imagined a music video of grainy color footage of some London street, a la the La’s or Madness. And the song’s video actually is a little like that, just easy on the grain and with more Sonic Youth posters. “Bitter Town” is a standout pop rock diamond from a year of pop rock gems, a dreamy, hazy mash-up of soaring hooks and messy anxiety.