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Written by KONSTANTIN BEZZUBOV
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Saturday, 30 May 2009 |
Grizzly Bear are very good at making albums that sound exactly like what their titles imply. 2006's Yellow House built on Ed Droste's solo recordings of intimately trippy folk pop found in 2004's Horn of Plenty. The former record legitimized the newly-quartet-ed band as supremely talented, masterful and slow-crafting musicians. There was a cozy-yet-steadily-creepy atmosphere about the whole thing that brimmed with mystery powered by layered vocals and slow-churning folk melodies. The smudges of flute and strings added an experimental and familiar sound all at once. It was one of those albums that make you smile like a moron because of its sheer quality.
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Grizzly Bear
|  Entertainment
Art
"Veckatimest"
(Warp Records)
Released May 26, 2009
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Veckatimest surges into a slightly different direction right away, in ways good and bad. The jazzy opening notes of "Southern Point" provide a jangly and expansive backdrop that never lets up. This record sounds like a last-minute look at a house the band is moving from. Frenetic keys in a bouncy "Two Weeks" with soaring vocals evoke a contemplative mood being broken by the doorbell ringing of movers and grabbing of just packed-up boxes. Perhaps this was the point; the band moved out of the recording space of the "Yellow House" that is Ed Droste's mother's home before recording Veckatimest.
The wide-open arenas of sound may signal a new start. The guys are alone in the open of the uninhabited island off Massachusetts the album was named after. But they still have their trademarks. "Fine for Now" plays with a loop of bass notes and "About Face" has an opening that surveys their new treading ground; both are interesting instrumental arrangements, and the vocals still anchor in Moody Blues waters. "While You Wait for the others" puts Daniel Rossen's translucent voice in the brightest limelight on the record, though its odd quality is gone here.
Surprises abound on Veckatimest, but the biggest one is slight disappointment about the meandering filler on many tracks that take too long to build up into mere shadows of what were once gratifying explorations of melancholy.
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sigh
Written by Guest on 2009-05-30 19:49:19
you are just wrong
it's a modern classic
5/5
no accounting for taste |
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