Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest
Warp Records
By Mike Randall
Historically, the creative peak for most bands is easiest attained on the debut record. Invisible deadlines, few distractions and no pressure allot this result. Far less frequent is when each subsequent release is better than the last and that pinnacle is reached a couple of albums in, while expectations are often unreasonably high. It’s a feat conquered by such bands as The National, Radiohead and Wilco, but more often than not media perception leads us to believe the anticipated album is better than it really is (Merriweather Post Pavilion comes to mind). Outside of bigger budgets and better drugs, it’s much more difficult to explain such a continuous growth in inspiration.
With the much-hyped release of Veckatimest, however, a glance at the big picture might make it pretty clear as to why Grizzly Bear have reached the top of the mountain and then some. The band has developed less like an athlete after a couple of years in the pros, and more like a team that started together as rookies and has grown stronger and stronger over time. Beginning as a guise for mastermind Ed Droste’s solo work, it’s evident that Veckatimest isn’t just the work of Lebron James without the supporting cast, this is Michael Jordan with a roster covering the floor.
Droste remains Grizzly Bear’s Brian Wilson – probably more than ever – but Veckatimest finds band contributions reaching breathtaking new heights, which is the kiss of death for just about anyone else. Depth is the difference here. Whereas 2006’s Yellow House sounded like a record from a wood cabin in the forest, Veckatimest resembles the sky before, during and after a thunderstorm. Songs like the album-opening “Southern Point” evolve the anti-folk of Yellow House, but layered with variations of prog-gy acoustic guitar and a Thom Yorke chorus (“In the end you’ll never find me now”), it shows how the sound is thicker than ever before, but not in a huge sense. Whereas many of the songs of Yellow House (which is an excellent album, by the way) felt like they were sleeping, these tunes are slow-burners and alive. Complex melodies and countermelodies run throughout, while vocal layers, string quartets and a host of other instruments and sounds make their way into the mix, all cohesively.
The imaginative force behind Veckatimest remains Droste and Daniel Rossen, but it’s Chris Taylor and specifically Christopher Bear’s ability to drive the ship that’s most impressive. Bear’s drumming on the hushed acoustic fugue “All We Ask” adds so much tension, while his cymbal work on “Fine For Now” creates an atmospheric element that didn’t surface previously. Both tracks demonstrate the group’s newfound vocal cohesion, with the latter giving Fleet Foxes a run for their money in the band harmony department. More excellent and complex Beach Boys’ harmonies exist during the phenomenal lead single, “Two Weeks,” but it’s “About Face” that finds the band in the rare middle ground between The Beatles and Crosby, Stills and Nash. “Dory” is another prime example that truly shows Grizzly Bear as the full package they’ve become; opening with the band singing in unison, Rossen leaps onto the passage and rides a vocal scale into the song’s birth as a gorgeous folk song propelled by Bear’s percussion thumps underneath, and Taylor’s keyboards chiming in like little birds.
The beauty of Veckatimest is how truly integrated it is, how there is no one layer more important than another. The hook-filled “While We Wait For The Others,” with its heartbeat percussion and sparse, garbage-can guitars, might be the catchiest song the band has ever written, but it’s also the most minimalist track here. And as great as the Brooklyn Youth Choir sounds with a string quartet arranged by Nico Muhly (who these days must be on speed-dial of every band in Kings County) during the piano-sprinkled “Foreground,” it’s not difficult to imagine them being every bit as compelling on stage. The same goes for the swirling, psychedelic epic that is “I Live With You,” which features heavenly backing from the Brooklyn Youth Choir and stings actually arranged by Rossen.
The hype machine works in strange ways. The kind of pre-release build-up for Vecakatimest could never have existed for an unproven band, and it’s all too common for the world to be expected of a release before anyone even hears it. So few supposed great records actually deliver, because too often the praise is based on previous body of work or what we wish that band or record to be. In the case of Veckatimest, the buzz has been justified, probably more than any album this anticipated in some time. While it will be tough to top Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear are clearly a band that’s still on the rise.
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