Review: Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (2009)
The hype game is such a fickle beast. So many artists have gone before, promising mountains and delivering mole-hills. The bombs, in either a critical or commercial sense, are always the most memorable, teaching us to temper our anticipation with sensibility. In some cases, the product is plugged beyond the point of possible adequacy. In the very worst of them, it’s so relentlessly pimped beforehand that its inevitable bust, no matter how severe, is all the more wildly adulated by the devoted receiving party.
It’s such a familiar operation that we could not help but cringe the day before release, trying to grasp wildly at the slippery reality that Grizzly Bear’s newest might not actually be as sweet as we hoped. But the release has come and gone, and the album is, in many ways, far more impressive than anyone expected. There can be no mitigated acclamation for Veckatimest, as it is as near to perfection as anyone’s likely to get this year.
And yet, at every interview, frontman Ed Droste has merely suggested that the band believes it to be their strongest effort, and that they would be excited to see how it is received with their fans. Sideliners insist that editors and bloggers worldwide have simply idolized the music for the credibility it afforded them, but in actuality, the songs themselves have begotten their own worthiness. Indeed, as nearly half of the tracks had been released in one form or another well ahead of the album, Veckatimest‘s repute is in many places only confirmed upon release, rather than asserted. It’s a good thing too, as hype snowballs — and certainly ones of the magnitude that this album had amassed — are often hard to overshadow when the music becomes legally obtainable to the public.
“Southern Point,” the album’s jauntiest and most welcoming tune, makes for the most natural lead-off track, and propels the record out of the gate on a tide of bouncy, exotic acoustic strums, exultant voices, and cannon-fire floor toms. It’s a fitting setup to the band’s creative dovetail song construction, fitting achingly poignant (but wildly varied) themes together with only so much as passing tones.
Grizzly Bear’s “Southern Point.”
Paradoxically, it’s all the dissimilarities and exceptions that give the album its fullest character. Take the budding and buoyant expressions on the band’s burnished faces by the end of the video for “Two Weeks:” though soon their heads may be but smoking ruins, they beam (literally) all the more, blinking incongruously. It was a wise single choice, showcasing the both band’s strength in vocal arrangement and their winsome harmonies. Victoria Legrand from Beach House guests here, but the band has proved themselves capable of reproducing it faithfully and effortlessly on stage even without her able help.
Little splashes of overblown reverb, lazy guitar flourishes, Droste’s sudden high strains, and all manner of asymmetrical ornamented beauty litter the whole of Veckatimest. The entirety of it is veritably inlaid with charming, unexpected chord changes, stunning instrumentation, and shimmering harmonies. “Dory,” a strong centerpiece, comes in cycles, and even makes way for a clarinet and a youth chorus amidst a shiver of vocal interplay. “Cheerleader” and “About Face” both wring vitality from sparing orchestral arrangements and stuttering slap-backs, and “I Live With You” crescendos slowly to a glorious mess, with drummer Christopher Bear thrashing wildly behind his set. The appropriately subdued “Foreground” closes the album succinctly, skirting hurt the way a lover does after conflict: “a little jetty fight / pattern evolving, motion insolvent / something about this might / take all evening / I’ll just be cleaning.”
The cover calls to mind a coalescence of precious stones. Should the gems be tilted this way and that, they would shimmer in naive beauty; they come about it modestly, not recognizing their own copious worth. So does this band, and this album. Late in the decade and equally — but perhaps fashionably — late to the show, Veckatimest is an album that neither develops nor defines its generation. It does, however, defend it, and that may just be better.
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