Artist: Grizzly Bear
Album: Veckatimest
Year: 2009
Grade: 4.5 pretzels
It’s been far too long since there’s been a great honest-to-god indie rock album. In this indie-saturated culture we live in, post-Juno, the “indie sound” has become commercialized and packaged to mainstream media consumption. This is why we get bands like Spoon and Arcade Fire hovering in the Top 10 on the Billboard album charts. The downside to this is that creative spark that was present in some of this decade’s earliest indie masterpieces has faded somewhat from view. That charmingly homespun quality that defined Spoon’s Kill The Moonlight or Wolf Parade’s Apologies To The Queen Mary has been replaced with a more knowing, aware sound. Bands are starting to realize that there’s a huge audience out there listening to their music and they’re writing songs with that in mind. However, it’s nice to hear an album like Veckatimest (it's named after an island in Massachusetts, if you must know) in this day and age, since it’s a throwback to an earlier type of indie rock that has become considerably endangered as the decade has worn on.
I didn’t expect an album like this to come from Grizzly Bear, however. The Brooklyn band sent waves through the indie-rock community in 2006 with their album Yellow House, which is an album I basically slept right through. Ethereal and so wispy it threatened to float right out the window, Yellow House was a yawn-inducing album that desperately needed some substance to anchor the band’s songs to. Shimmering atmospheres and lilting guitar picking don’t cut it in my book. So, imagine my surprise when they released Veckatimest, solving that exact problem. Thanks, guys.
Veckatimest still retains the band’s dreamy, drifting vibe, but this time around, the songs have so much more meat to work with. A great example is the opening “Southern Point”, which is held down by a subtle keyboard line before it explodes into a sunny rush of drums and heavily mixed acoustic strumming. Dominated by the rich harmonies that seem to be all the rage with bands these days (Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes, even Mastodon got in on the fun), it’s an attention-grabbing opening that proves that Grizzly Bear have evolved since their last album. “Southern Point” leads into “Two Weeks”, the clear standout on the album, with its instantly memorable twinkling keyboard riff. The amazing part about “Two Weeks” is how little there actually is within the song. Not unlike Spoon, Grizzly Bear have found a masterful way to create strong songs with a minimum of clutter. With “Two Weeks”, a great indie single is born out of little more than a keyboard riff, some bass and lots of harmonies.
The rest of the album may not hit the high that “Two Weeks” does, but it continues the band’s trip through solid, catchy, down-to-earth indie rock. The jerky “Cheerleader” and hesitant “While You Wait For The Others” are definite standouts. However, it’s all leading to my favorite track on the album, the closing “Foreground”. An astonishing piece of music, “Foreground” is a haunting piano-led number, evoking Arcade Fire at their most minimal and quiet with slow violins and a vocal performance by Ed Droste that is absolutely drenched in emotion. It’s a strong, memorable way to end an album and leaves the listener stunned for a moment as the last notes fade away into silence. Most bands would kill for a song that can do that.
Between Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, this year is delivering great albums from places I didn’t expect. I’ve been slow to jump on the “dreamy-pastel-colored-indie-rock” bandwagon, but with albums this strong, it’s becoming hard to say no. Veckatimest doesn’t equal the best that indie rock has given us this decade, but it does an admirable job trying. I commend the band for noticing some of the short-comings in their music and taking the necessary steps to change them. For their efforts, they’ve given the world a strong, often sad album, worthy of acknowledgement in the future.
I didn’t expect an album like this to come from Grizzly Bear, however. The Brooklyn band sent waves through the indie-rock community in 2006 with their album Yellow House, which is an album I basically slept right through. Ethereal and so wispy it threatened to float right out the window, Yellow House was a yawn-inducing album that desperately needed some substance to anchor the band’s songs to. Shimmering atmospheres and lilting guitar picking don’t cut it in my book. So, imagine my surprise when they released Veckatimest, solving that exact problem. Thanks, guys.
Veckatimest still retains the band’s dreamy, drifting vibe, but this time around, the songs have so much more meat to work with. A great example is the opening “Southern Point”, which is held down by a subtle keyboard line before it explodes into a sunny rush of drums and heavily mixed acoustic strumming. Dominated by the rich harmonies that seem to be all the rage with bands these days (Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes, even Mastodon got in on the fun), it’s an attention-grabbing opening that proves that Grizzly Bear have evolved since their last album. “Southern Point” leads into “Two Weeks”, the clear standout on the album, with its instantly memorable twinkling keyboard riff. The amazing part about “Two Weeks” is how little there actually is within the song. Not unlike Spoon, Grizzly Bear have found a masterful way to create strong songs with a minimum of clutter. With “Two Weeks”, a great indie single is born out of little more than a keyboard riff, some bass and lots of harmonies.
The rest of the album may not hit the high that “Two Weeks” does, but it continues the band’s trip through solid, catchy, down-to-earth indie rock. The jerky “Cheerleader” and hesitant “While You Wait For The Others” are definite standouts. However, it’s all leading to my favorite track on the album, the closing “Foreground”. An astonishing piece of music, “Foreground” is a haunting piano-led number, evoking Arcade Fire at their most minimal and quiet with slow violins and a vocal performance by Ed Droste that is absolutely drenched in emotion. It’s a strong, memorable way to end an album and leaves the listener stunned for a moment as the last notes fade away into silence. Most bands would kill for a song that can do that.
Between Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, this year is delivering great albums from places I didn’t expect. I’ve been slow to jump on the “dreamy-pastel-colored-indie-rock” bandwagon, but with albums this strong, it’s becoming hard to say no. Veckatimest doesn’t equal the best that indie rock has given us this decade, but it does an admirable job trying. I commend the band for noticing some of the short-comings in their music and taking the necessary steps to change them. For their efforts, they’ve given the world a strong, often sad album, worthy of acknowledgement in the future.
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