Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear

Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear
Warp Records.

SCQ Rating: 72%

To refute the greatness of Veckatimest at this late stage of the game - two months after its release - is tantamount to attention-seeking. I’m not immune to hype, nor am I a contrarian to public opinion in and of itself. Like you, dear reader, I was pummeled into heart-pounding anticipation well before the album came out, having swallowed every exclamation from the indie press and reserved some hard-earned dough for Grizzly Bear’s follow-up to 2006’s Yellow House. And lord knows I’ve tried: I even toured around Massachusetts - the state where Veckatimest Island is situated - with this album, trying to find some atmosphere in these twelve tunes of that inhospitable rock. Simply put, I am an individual who can admit when an album has failed to grip me in any way and, despite the multiple levels in which I appreciate this Brooklyn four-piece, Veckatimest is a good album catapulted by publicity.

Did he just say good?!? A painful non-descriptor, I know, but perfectly suitable for many of these songs; ‘Cheerleader’ which bounds softly on bass-lines and ‘Hold Still’ are both incapable of breaching their own loveliness with any contrast, any trigger. The lyrics of ‘Hold Still’ nearly sum up this aggravation, quoting “There isn’t anything left to try / Here we go again we’ll carry but then again / We couldn’t take this on / The story goes unformed / As if we never were there at all”. Now the last thing I’d wish is for each track to erupt in the way ‘I Live With You’ or ‘Southern Point’ does, yet much of Veckatimest seems to float by on mid-tempo excursions that end where they began, their circular progressions peppered with light prog flourishes. An unformed story, indeed. Blame for this sleepiness may rest on the band’s foremost asset, vocalist Ed Droste, whose timbre is pitch-perfect throughout but almost begs for compositions as soft and spongy as these. He may lack the guts for the heavier material but Droste’s vocals engage some of Veckatimest’s best songs; ‘Two Weeks’ wouldn’t be as magnificent in his absence and the man basically carries the twilight sparkle of ‘Foreground’. Besides, the band isn't exactly short on vocalists. One could say Grizzly Bear are moving towards easy-rock for the indie crowd with this release and it’s arguable. At the very least it’s more believable than rivaling Veckatimest against Merriweather Post Pavillion for album of the year. Please.

Yellow House was a cavernous, spectral record, with songs that ducked shadows (‘Easier’, ‘Knife’) as often as it projected enormity (the blistering climax of ‘On a Neck, On a Spit’, the endless soundscape of ‘Colorado’) and, while there is no shortage of excellent instrumentation on this new release, I feel no atmosphere at all. For all its hype, Veckatimest is a better advocate for showcasing a creative and multitalented band than being a tremendous album.

Yellow House - Grizzly Bear

Yellow House

Grizzly Bear
Warp Records



SCQ Rating: 76%

My first trip to Yellow House was an uneasy one. Like most, I was immediately entranced by the swirling melodies and driving strum of banjo on opener ‘Easier’. I appreciated the near doo-wap rhythm of ‘Knife’ and dug the Beach Boys-esque harmonizing on ‘Little Brother’. Then I stopped listening to it. Each time I’d prepare to walk out into another day, my finger would breeze past its ominous cover cautiously before settling on something else. While I couldn’t pinpoint any reason, I was at arm’s length from the record and the worst part was, I began feeling as though the record wasn’t giving me the chance.

A week in New Hampshire changed all that. For all its multi-layered vocals, complex arrangements, haunting woodwinds and dreamy autoharps, Yellow House’s great strength is its subtlety; that amidst such wonderfully imaginative song arrangements and a broad spectrum of sounds, each song manages to make the listener feel terribly alone. Perhaps it was crawling the Appalachians at the dusk of a ten hour drive, or staying in a century old farmhouse surrounded by woods, but the downward crunch of ‘Lullabye’ took upon a heftier significance, the gentle vocals of ‘Reprise’ felt like echoes from the New England evergreens. My running pace turned to a sprint as ‘On a Neck, On a Spit’ struck its gorgeous climax; a rocking centerpiece to a restrained album. And closing song ‘Colorado’, with its menacing piano and drenched effects, was felt in each heap of snow like a reminder that if I were to take a wrong turn, this landscape might swallow me whole.

If it sounds like I’m reaching here, you haven’t given the record its opportunity. This is a record for wandering adrift, getting lost, exploring new lands and finding comfort in old houses.