Saturday, July 11, 2009

Pitchfork Spotlight: Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear is a Brooklyn based band, with a sound uncategorized and is dominated with acoustic guitars and harmonized vocals. Becoming familiar with this band during their hibernation from the studio, I approached the music with trepidation. I have a tendency to avoid hyped bands for fear my expectations are going to be dashed. Intrigued by a live performance of “Two Weeks” in its early stages on Letterman, I was ready to finally approach the Yellow House with all of its shoe gazing, anti folk genre blending generalizations. In this introductory opus, music is interwoven layer upon layer to create this spectacular sensorial stimulant. Much like the themes in their songs, words cannot fully describe the amazing ness emitted from Grizzly Bear’s music. I would say this is the closest thing to a beautifully danced ballet or a complex themed opera. So many attributes to a classical presence with the modernity of a love struck indie rock band. To contrast this strong overture, this summer the band has introduced us to Veckatimest (Ve-cot-a-must) named after an abandoned New England island and what the band describes as a more accessible album than their previous work. It might be true to some extent where the ideas are graspable but yet not completely obtainable. It is a puzzle that one enjoys to attempt to solve but is constantly challenged with the next obstacle. In discussing the lyrics in Veckatimest, Ed Droste said there is a common enjoyment of keeping lyrics vague and ambiguous mentioning a favorite aspect of the band’s own listening habits is finding their own meaning in the music.

“Cheerleader” is this unclear hazy proclamation of one’s reflections of a past role in high school, defining the personal realization of how meaningless those activities were in actuality. The instrumentation creates a chanting pep rally that reiterates the delusions of grandeur a teenager has of themselves in that stage in their life.

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