A Grizzly Bear record doesn’t belong in a fleeting attention span, pick-and-mix iTunes world. That’s because their records require time to extract the goodness from within. The casual listener might be intrigued at the slow moving parts, the delicate instrumentation, the elaborately layered vocals but to truly distil the Brooklyn band’s message you better set some hours aside. The rewards are many as the nuances and secret doorways reveal grand imagery, bright melodies and a cohesion that wasn’t apparent earlier. This quality gives Grizzly Bear’s output a longevity that is absent from the vast majority of contemporary music. Thankfully their run of impressiveness continues on new album ‘Shields’ which is everything you’d expect and more. It can be at the same time, incidental and all-encompassing but its greatest quality is its inherent power in drawing you into a fine web of intrigue. This is an album that works as an album should, remove a single track and suddenly the vast mosaic sounds incomplete. As a consequence trying to extract individual moments for inspection is difficult because they sound better when presented as a whole but ‘Yet Again’ is so wonderful it can operate on a solo run. ‘Shields’ majesty could well provide an antidote for jaded listeners convinced that the end is nigh for brand new classics. A few more like this and we could yet have happened upon a golden age. KD
Grizzly Bear – Yet Again
More Info: Official
Buy Songs: Grizzly Bear
Year: 2012
Stream ‘Shields’ in full below (courtesy of NPR)
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