Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

Edward Droste’s Grizzly Bear seems to have sprung almost fully formed from the lo-fi bedroom studio scene into the world of well polished lo-fi wonders. On Yellow House, the music of Droste’s band — including members Christopher Bear (the last name is coincidental), Daniel Rossen, and Chris Taylor — induces shivers of heightened emotion and varying inner states of calm by turns as it evokes respectful comparisons, sometimes broad and sometimes specific, to the likes of Radiohead, The Beach Boys, Arcade Fire, and Iron and Wine. Once you’ve listened to just a few songs from their new album, this is not at all surprising or eyebrow-raising.

The new material that comprises Yellow House (released on Warp Records on September 4th) puts the band at the vanguard of contemporary song writing. The album was self-recorded during an idyllic summer. The makeshift studio was provided by Droste’s mom’s living room in a yellow house just off Cape Cod. Magical, haunting melodies are still their mainstay. Grizzly Bear always craft their songs from start to finish – meticulous instrumentation and arrangements are their specialty. On Yellow House, Grizzly Bear still flex their lo-fi connoisseurship, but with a better recording – DIY embellished with Taylor’s fine sonic engineering acumen. Droste and Rossen share initial song writing duties, although the entire band collaborates to breath life into the tracks. [Source: Bio.]

Magical, haunting melodies, indeed. As in “Plans”, when the layered voices croon in your ear “Every option I have costs more than I’ve got…”, as the song’s odd beat (like a slow waltz performed from a burro’s back) dances you forward through time grown oddly syrupy, as the choral voice rises and falls (à la the aforementioned Beach Boys) and is finally cut-up among the odd electronic noises…. And also in “Marla”, with its nude-descending-a-staircase echoing piano and its strangely Seussian lyrics…. But, then again, “On a Neck, On a Spit” winds up with a much more straightforward alternative rock association in the end, shifting gears as it does into a slowly careering wall of sound that would, at the peak of the song (close to the four minute mark), be at home at Lollapalooza even as the initial 2:50 of the song puts me in mind of Pink Floyd’s “San Tropez”. “Reprise” follows all this up with banjo and a folky structure. And yet nowhere on Yellow House do you ever feel lost or snagged by a nagging sense of disjointedness.

Grizzly Bear hold together in their varied compositions with a refreshing musical vision that, for all the comparisons that could be made, is absolutely their own.

See two videos from Grizzly Bear: “Lullabye” (live), from Yellow House, and the more experimental and lo-fi “Deep Sea Diver”, from Ed Droste’s first effort, Horn of Plenty.

Thanks are due Pitchfork, whose review turned me on to the band.