Album Review: Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Yep, you got it - it's two takes from Muso's Towers/Palace of the very same album. Reading a little like so...

TOM BOLTON thinks...

The lo-fi nursery rhyme folk of Grizzly Bear's last album, Yellow House, was understated and quietly gorgeous.  It also needed more variation and deeper reserves of energy to push it to another level.

Veckatimest moves into new, more assertive, more productive territory.  The opener, 'Southern Point', begins with a full minute of what sounds alarmingly like acid jazz, but then the tempo jumps a gear as Byrds guitar sounds and cries of "You'll never find me now in the air drive the song into the realms of unashamed psych pleasure.

Then we have 'Two Weeks', possibly the album's best track, a haunting tune sung in delicious falsetto over a two-note bar-room piano riff and a rumbling bass that comes on like a fairground marching band.  It's seriously exuberant, but the lyrics coldly dissect a short-lived relationship.

'While You Wait for the Others' lines up bursts of crunchy, fuzz guitar alongside bitter, confrontational lyrics.  The song rolls to a big crescendo, helped by unexpected, fantastic bursts of harmony singing that verge on the gospel.

With a line in cheerful experimentation, a penchant for sun-drenched close harmony voices, and a confidence all of their own Grizzly Bear have produced something special.  This is a record that only they could have made.

SEAN CLOTHIER thinks...

Grizzly Bear have been steadily building up a name for themselves and currently are one of the biggest bands to most usually elicit that classic "oh, I know of them, but I haven't actually heard any of their music" response. But like previous name-recognition-only favourites Animal Collective, 2009 will almost certainly mark the point they, if not hit the mainstream, at least get into one of its tributaries.

And like the bestial buddies of Baltimore's finest export since Omar Little, this step into the limelight won't be as a result of a conscious grasp for public attention (i.e. your common or garden "selling out" manoeuvre), but rather in creating an album which doesn't merely sound better than anything they've ever done before, but also a logical evolution from their previous works.

Sure, like its own title, Veckatimest still sounds a little raggedy and raw, but the corners are sanded and smoothed enough for it to sound like whilst the band is playing in the next room, they're playing really well. Also the songs are generally tight and focused, with some of their best and most instantly memorable tunes like modern-classic-even-though-some-bloody-mobile-phone-company-is-bound-to-use-it-in-a-crappy-twee-advert 'Two Weeks', the wonderful, bouncy and almost show-tune like 'Fine For Now' and beautiful White Album-evoking closer 'Foreground'.

Grizzly Bear, thank you for stepping up. It is now time for you to enter the pantheon of really popular musical acts that aren't at all rubbish. Oh, and when you get in there, have a word with Neil Young will you? Tell him he's going to be out on his arse if he writes another pathetic concept album about electric cars.