The Grizzly Bear thread
Alright, so this past week I've gotten into Grizzly Bear. Had very briefly checked out a few of their songs before, but it wasn't until several days ago when I happened to click on a 'recommended song' link on Youtube while listening to a Panda Bear tune, that I listened to them intently. That recommended song happened to be Easier which, among all Grizzly Bear songs, is definitely the one which was going to jump out at me the most. So the magic of Youtube has gotten me into Grizzly Bear.
After now listening to Yellow House about 6 or 7 times, Veckatimest probably 5 to 6 times, and Shields 3 or 4 times, here are my observations (I still haven't really checked out Horn of Plenty too much yet):
If Animal Collective is kinda sorta the Yes of the 21st Century, Grizzly Bear is kinda sorta the Pink Floyd of the 21st Century. In fact, I can't help but wonder if the denizens of fans who are keeping The Dark Side of the Moon appearing in the Billboard Top 200 now and then even 40 years after its release would stumble across Grizzly Bear more often, that Grizzly Bear would be a more popular band than they currently are?
Anyway, my impression after several listens is that Grizzly Bear is very artsy rock. Except for a song here and there (such as Easier and About Face with me), I doubt Grizzly Bear is going to have much appeal to most people after just one listen.
The obvious progression of their songs and albums is that Yellow House started off almost as a folk-rock album, but they've progressively gone away from that. Personally I really like their acoustic/melodic stuff, so the progression is a bit disappointing to me. On the other hand, I can hear their songwriting mature over the course of the three albums. Yellow House has a few songs which have jumps from acoustic to loud segments which are rather awkward and don't quite work well, whereas their next two albums don't have that problem nearly as much.
And yet, I still find that Yellow House has only 1 or 2 songs that drag and make me want to skip it, while Veckatimest has probably 2 or 3, and Shields has 4 or 5. So it's a mixed bag. Some aspects of their songwriting have gotten better over the course of their albums, while other aspects have gotten worse.
Personally I'd like to see their next album do another folk-rock type thing. Would be nice to see if they could do an improvement over Yellow House.
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