Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins
The Quietus
Ed Droste, founder and one quarter of Grizzly Bear, recently greeted the notion of Lana Del Rey being an indie rock artist with a resounding “What are you talking about?” A little tightfisted, perhaps, but Droste is nothing if not a musician who has invested a lot into the nebulous realm in question.
Contrary to Dirty Projectors’ David Longstreth and Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold’s idea that it “peaked” in 2009, Droste thinks the idea that indie rock is at an impasse stems from an illusion generated by the same “waves and trends” that give Del Rey the double-edged endorsement of being, you know, legit enough to be worthy of inclusion into the White Indie Dudes club. If the overarching form of indie rock – a term Droste accepts is “silly” in 2017 – does ebb and flow, if not come and go, Grizzly Bear’s latest confirms one categorical fact: if only as a sonic quest, the four-piece have every right to chew over the alleged validity of the genre.
Twelve years on from arriving via Yellow House – Grizzly Bear’s second studio album and first to feature the now indispensable Daniel Rossen of Department Of Eagles on vocals and guitar – Painted Ruins is a finely woven, at times dazzling meditation on disintegration and the necessity of perseverance in the leering face of the unknown. With their signature mix of art rock and chamber pop, these 11 songs capture a quartet who are now fully operating as a unit, having originally begun as an Ed Droste solo project in 2002. Recorded by the band’s bassist and long-time producer Chris Taylor, album number five hits home with a steadfast sense of unity, underscored by a thread of slick compositional intelligence.
Where opener ‘Wasted Acres’ and the balmy, somnambulant sway of six-minute lead single 'Three Rings' present a rich wealth of melodic finesse, mid-album highlight ‘Four Cypresses’ – with its rhythmic flourishes and darkly harmonic twists and turns – makes for borderline grandstanding stuff. Elsewhere, the shrewd shifts and almost-imperceptible tonal changes on mid-album peak ‘Aquarian’ capture the band’s knack for exquisite chord changes that reward a keen ear. Woven with sweeping, three and four-part harmonies – not least on second single ‘Mourning Sound’ – Grizzly Bear have once more mined majesty from honouring the craft of the song, not to mention the profound air of mournful wanderlust that is forged when Droste and Rossen bang heads. With drummer Chris Bear – a master of understated Phil Selway-esque flourishes – delivering many moments of brilliance that marry hip hop, prog and afrobeat influence, Grizzly Bear notch up at times to a realm of straight-up virtuosic finesse.
Lyrically, Droste and Rossen veer between thinly veiled allegories of weighty, real-world disquiet and terse, unknowable personal impressions. Where ‘Cut Out’ and ‘Systole’ present some tight-lipped private ruminations and 'Losing All Sense' is an example of the band at their most inscrutable, Rossen musing on the sound of “distant shots and passing trucks” on ‘Mourning Sound’, the “workable chaos” of ‘Four Cypresses’ and ‘Aquarian’ are but three examples of the album’s confrontation with imminent ends and crushing blows in an age of severe uncertainty. But with several references to waking up and the morning speckled throughout Painted Ruins, Grizzly Bear quietly offer up the promise of sanctuary despite the spectre of unease lurking just out of shot.
While perhaps coming up slightly short on the nuanced splendor of Shields and the instantaneous élan of its Veckatimest, Painted Ruins is a special kind of conquest. Be it via the unseen sparks that spring forth from heartbreak or the dizzying urges that stem from one too many late-night wrangling with one’s place in the world, this is music stemming from a place that few artists can access. It may or may not be indie rock, but if the question is asked one too many times, the retort must always remain the same: “What are you talking about?”
Share this article:
Mon Sep 04 13:43:13 GMT 2017Drowned In Sound 80
Somehow, five years have gone by since Shields, Grizzly Bear's final album on Warp Records. Somewhere between it and 2009's Veckatimest the band became one of the most unlikely 'big deals' around thanks in no small part due to their work on the film Blue Valentine and the song 'Two Weeks' being featured on practically every advert ever. So while it shouldn't come as a surprise that the once-dubbed 'freak folk' act are now signed to a major (Sony's RCA imprint), it still seems a little odd that such a band could achieve such heights, but perhaps that's just where we are with music in 2017. Not that Warp Records was exactly an 'expected' home. Sure, they have increased the amount of electronics in their sound, but it is in no way their primary focus despite spending their career so far on an otherwise almost entirely electronic label.
What is consistent about Grizzly Bear, however, has been the strength of the material. Though for some, 2006's Yellow House remains their high watermark, hardly anyone can deny that their material hasn't lost the same allure they built up from the early days. The only real mystery was whether we would even get another Grizzly Bear album, as in the five-year interim, the band have split coasts (half are based in LA now) and seemed more interested in their personal projects. Whether or not it was major label money that brought them back into existence, there appears to be no impact on the music. Painted Ruins the band's fifth set, continues their D.I.Y attitude of writing collaboratively in secluded spots and being produced by their multitasking bassist, Chris Taylor and their wholly idiosyncratic writing style remains thankfully intact.
For there isn't really anyone else out there making music even remotely like Grizzly Bear at such a high and consistent level. Their eclectic mix of folk, chamber pop, electronics and jazz maintains their status as a band both perfectly approachable and challenging, and this remains their greatest success. 'Losing All Sense' for instance has all the baroque charms of 'Two Weeks', stomping along at heady pace. Both this and earlier single 'Neighbours' are perfect examples of one of the band's best strengths, the subtle build. They have a tendency to let a song do its thing in a familiar and pleasing fashion, before pulling the rug from underneath the listener with a section that somehow manages to pile more layers, more meaning, more feeling into the established foundations, before knocking the whole thing down again.
Meanwhile, 'Mourning Sound' proved to be one of the band's best "pop" efforts, all pomp and circumstance, painting an early morning scene that seems peaceful on the surface but threatens a more chaotic, violent prospect in the middle-distance. 'Aquarian' showcases Christopher Bear's exquisite jazz drumming. He's has always been the quiet hero of Grizzly Bear, ensuring everything they touch turns to gold due to his cardio strength behind the skins.
As always though, dual frontmen Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen remain the stars of the piece. While, like Wolf Parade, it's not immediately obvious which one is leading the charge, it never exactly matters. The two compliment each other so profoundly with their glorious, soaring melodies and songwriting styles that they remain the not-so-secret weapon in Grizzly Bear's impressive arsenal. Despite over ten years of writing together, they remain incredible talents and it's in plain sight all over their latest record, especially on finale 'Sky Took Hold', a storm-brewing climax which eventually boils down to their voices in the eye of it.
Yet again, this is another excellent record from a group who don't seem to know how to produce anything else. We almost don't deserve a band who remain so consistently inventive and appealing. Sure, there is no mistaking Grizzly Bear's sound; this album doesn't drastically change anything from their 'formula', but when said the formula is so enthralling and unpredictable, no wonder it still hasn't lost its sheen after a decade creating it. While the band have clearly slowed down to create their fifth record, Painted Ruins shows no signs of stopping their quality of sound and long may that continue.
Wed Aug 16 08:01:05 GMT 2017The Guardian 80
(Sony)
The world of Grizzly Bear, it seems, moves far more slowly than the one the rest of us inhabit. It’s been five years since the Brooklyn-by-way-of-LA outfit last released an album, Shields, and in that time the tectonic plates in culture, politics, everything, have shifted dramatically. You wouldn’t be able to tell any of that from Painted Ruins, which sounds like Grizzly Bear shaking themselves back into gear after a short nap.
Related: Grizzly Bear return: ‘America has become toxic – it’s palpable everywhere’
Continue reading... Thu Aug 17 20:45:04 GMT 2017Pitchfork 73
The intricate compositions on the band’s fifth album are bound tighter than ever, evoking distant images and emotions that continually shift in and out of focus.
Fri Aug 18 05:00:00 GMT 2017Tiny Mix Tapes 40
Grizzly Bear
Painted Ruins
[RCA; 2017]
Rating: 2/5
For the past decade and a half, Grizzly Bear have been working to establish a lingua franca between the historically uncool prog rock and the sporadically trendy indie rock. This idiom the group has created often combines protean song structures with affecting first-person lyricism in order to defy the capricious gauges of hipness to which so many indie acts submit themselves. It also abides the occasional pop concession that demands a more conspicuous mix of Ed Droste’s vocals amid the erudite, imperious instrumentation by the rest of the group. Consequently, Grizzly Bear’s conception of rock music is one of inclusive open-mindedness and generic metamorphosis, allowing for frequent experimentation while still leaving the band’s identity and accessibility intact. Yet here, on Painted Ruins, sonic exploration causes the album’s atmosphere to rise to salience and all but divest its songs of distinctiveness and viscera.
As the title suggests, Painted Ruins features Droste examining the past — more specifically, his personal history — but while the album’s use of the modifier “Painted” intimates a kind of revisionism or whitewashing, its lyrics depict an unflinching appraisal of the singer’s previous missteps and transgressions. At turns, Droste plays the defeatist, conceding his wrongheadedness while acknowledging the incorrigibility of his actions, like on “Mourning Sounds:” “I made a mistake/ I should have never tried.” Elsewhere, he promotes an occlusion from the past, as on “Aquarian,” in which Droste advises an “astral actor” to “lay [his/her] body on the burning ground/ That separates this mind from all that’s passed.” Ultimately, though, Droste and co. learn to accept the past as inextricable from the present (and future). The band uses epiphany as a pathway to atonement, as evidenced by “Sky Took Hold,” in which a world-weary Droste reconsiders his identity (“Who I am beneath the surface/ Hiding out so long inside my mind”) and, upon confronting the facet of himself he’d so tirelessly worked to hide, finally gives it the attention it deserves: “I’ve grown to accept it, let it take the stage.”
Unfortunately, these metaphysical abstractions are buttressed by an underwhelming, contemplative instrumentation befitting such intellectual ideas. Whether the group are aping Low-era Bowie (“Wasted Acres”), playacting as a heavily-sedated Steely Dan (“Glass Hillside”), or adopting the pale aloofness that marred Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight (“Cut-Out”), Grizzly Bear match the ruminative nature of their introspective lyrics with equally subdued music. The tracks often drift into one large ether of synth sounds bereft of any virility. Not even the 6/8 time signature of “Three Rings,” for example, can engender enough vim to redeem the song’s slow-burning dynamics and nebulous vocals. Painted Ruins, however, isn’t without its excitations; boasting the album’s most developed melody and undergirded by Christopher Bear’s no-frills drumming, “Mourning Sound” finds Grizzly Bear at their zenith on the album, pairing dreamy synth-rock with a near-earworm chorus. Likewise, the commanding yet androgynous vocals of “Systole” complement the song’s warm, florid instrumentation, rendering it evocative of the rush of blood to which the song title refers. Through the synthetic miasma of Painted Ruins, there shines the scant beacon.
Grizzly Bear have never been a group to temper their idiosyncratic proclivities in the name of commercialism; their liberal approach to song structure and production has effectively stymied their commercial success (excepting Shields and Veckatimest), yet it’s also afforded them unwavering indie-kid adoration. But as we see fellow alternative rock compatriots Animal Collective and Arcade Fire shooting themselves in the foot by making safe, benign music of late, it bears repeating that experimentation in rock & roll simply can’t sustain itself. This writing is carved on the walls of the indelibly scarred psyches of Brian Wilson, Roky Erickson, and Jeff Mangum. So on the new album, The Grizzlies obfuscate their own future by indulging in retrospection and trudging ahead with the electronic sound that allotted them their initial success. But with nary an aural step forward from their hitherto records, Painted Ruins ends much in the same way it begins, not with a bang, but with a drone.