Flashback!
Fog clears, eerie music quiets to a faint hum.
It's Wednesday June 3, 2009, 10:37 a.m. You're lackadaisically browsing the morning paper while munching on your usual breakfast of Special K swimming in a sea of heavy cream and nacho cheese. You dissect your mountain of morning nachos with your spoon, as if it may reveal some great truth to you at any moment. It only grows cold, gelatinous and eventually unappetizing. You return to the newspaper and make your way toward the arts section.
You think, "Might as well check out how some of my favorite musical artists and/or bands have fared in this week's statistically-backed musical popularity contest."
It all looks good. Eminem is still No. 1. Green Day is holding it down at No. 2. Yes, everything is in its right place. The Hannah Montana Movie Soundtrack has jumped up to No. 3. Marilyn Manson has debuted at No. 4. Your brain hurts a little while trying to figure out why 49,000 Americans bought his album last week. You move on. Lady Gaga, ringing in at No. 5. Kenny Chesney has dropped to a disappointing No. 6. You say a prayer, make the mark of the cross, and move on. Reggaeton superstars Wisin and Yandel are back at No. 7. No surprises here.
You arrive at No. 8 and your heart stops. You gasp for air. Time slows down. You drop your fork and watch it bounce on the linoleum for what seems like days. Your mother is asking you if you're alright, but she might as well be doing hukilau for all you know. Something incredible has happened. Something so completely beyond anything you could have ever imagined. A grizzly bear has out-seated Taylor Swift.
Backflash!
Fog clears, eerie music quiets to a faint hum.
It's okay. We're back in the present and I'm here to explain. That wasn't just any grizzly bear that beat out your beloved Ms. Swift. It was Grizzly Bear, Brooklyn indie-folk quartet, par excellence. Folk, not your thing? Well, it's not usually the Billboard Top 10's thing either. So clearly you don't have to be a plaid-clad, tight jeans-wearin', card carrying hipster to dig Grizzly Bear's music. In fact, Jay-Z and Beyonce are big fans. The power couple was recently spotted at the band's Williamsburg Waterfront show. But I digress.
The point is that "Veckatimest" is much more, than well, just another Billboard top-ten album. It's also much more than a flash-in-the-pan indie hit. For one thing, it's been a while in the making.
Grizzly Bear burst on the scene—or sidled up on it—in 2004 with the self-produced "Horn of Plenty." At this point, Grizzly Bear was just singer/guitarist/noisemaker Ed Droste's bedroom recording project. Released on the tiny Brooklyn indie label Kanine Records, its idiosyncratic, lo-fi folk songs made a small splash in the indie community. The Jigga-man had not yet taken notice.
Droste followed up Horn of Plenty with the now hard-to-find "Sorry for the Delay" EP, released in May 2006. It's a continuation of what Droste started with "Horn of Plenty," but is worth tracking down simply for the achingly beautiful, snail's pace cover of Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart." August 2006 found Droste joined by three like-minded compatriots, Daniel Rossen, Chris Taylor and Christopher Bear, both on record and on stage. Their debut as a band, "Yellow House," quickly garnered massive critical acclaim.
While Droste's first two releases are chock full of gorgeous songs, "Yellow House" is the definitive musical statement. I would even go so far as to say it's a landmark album, a towering monument in the land of American vernacular music. Its sounds are familiar, yet so new at the same time. Shreds of doo-wop and Appalachian music mix with Beatles-esque four-part harmonies and sorrowful melodies that owe much to jazz and blues. Take almost any thirty-second sample of the album and you can hear an entire century of American music churning in the melting pot.
It's all there, from Bob Dylan to Aaron Copland, Jelly Rolly Morton to Neil Young, Robert Johnson to George Gershwin. Somehow Grizzly Bear is able to acknowledge and absorb everything that has come before them, build upon it all and create something both modern and uniquely their own. "Yellow House" showcases a band that has reflected upon the 20th century and greeted the 21st with open arms.
In 2007, the band released "Friend EP," a 10-song album, featuring brilliant re-works of four Grizzly Bear songs, two new songs, a cover of the '60s girl group, the Crystals' hit, "He Hit Me," and three covers of Grizzly Bear tracks recorded by their "friends," Atlas Sound, CSS, and The Band of Horses. The album's only flaws were the covers, which served as proof that there is only one Grizzly Bear, only one chosen band to continue on the great tradition of American music.
So that (finally) brings us to this summer's "Veckatimest."
May 26 2009: I walk down to Bull Moose and purchase "Veckatimest." I pop it in my discman (yes, I still use my discman), slip on my headphones, and wait to be taken somewhere wonderful. I am instead disappointed. The CD has its moments, but it's so clean and pristine. The rough edges of "Yellow House" have been smoothed over and the group's whole sound has shifted towards, well, the pop charts. But something brings me back the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and almost every day of the summer.
"Veckatimest" is not "Yellow House," but it is an absolute masterpiece, which is something that took me some time to realize. I was so deeply in love with "Yellow House" that I was not ready for any sort of change, and when one came, I felt (momentarily) betrayed. Veckatimest presents a different Grizzly Bear.
The album is immediately "poppier," something which even the band admits. It is also cleaner and more "produced," due to the fact that Yellow House's success allowed the band to enter a real studio for the first time. But these are not bad things. Yes, Veckatimest is more accessible than Grizzly Bear's previous efforts, but it's also just as adventurous. Sure, the hit single, "Two Weeks" is undoubtedly the most upbeat thing Grizzly Bear has ever put to tape, but a deeper cut, "I Live With You" is the single heaviest and most violent piece on any of their albums. With its choral and string arrangements and squelching electronics, it is dark, incredibly emotive, and even frightening.
Tracks like this, as well as "Ready, Able" and "Foreground," reach a certain grandiosity that Grizzly Bear has never attained before (not many bands have). "Dory," the sixth cut on the album, features the single most dissonant "hook" I have ever heard in a pop song. "Veckatimest" is most certainly not a step backwards, nor is yet another document of a band sugar-coating their sound for the masses. Veckatimest captures an incredibly innovative band, at the peak of their powers, as they move forward into unexplored territories.
Several years ago, Michael Stipe of REM, said of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, "Well, Thom has entered that rarefied class of songwriter—these are people like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchel, and myself."
Yes, he actually said that...and he was right about one thing. Thom Yorke, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell are members of a 'rarefied class,' along with people like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix and many others. The newest members of this oh-so-exclusive club? Grizzly Bear.