Grizzly Bear Blurts, Sets Summer Tour

Conversation with the band's Ed Droste incoming....

By Blurt Staff

Now it can be revealed: Brooklyn's Grizzly Bear - or, technically, the band's resident blogger and bon vivant Edward Droste - is one of six musical leading lights who grace the cover of the debut print issue of BLURT. (Who are the other five? If you've signed up for the BLURT newsletter, you might find out tonight...)  In it, we've got a conversation with Droste about his band and their hotly-tipped sophomore album Veckatimest (due from Warp Records on May 26^th), as well with musings on how Grizzly Bear has slowly but surely moved to the forefront of the contemporary indie-rock scene.

"I think we're just a slow burn type of band," Droste tells BLURT. "I mean, we're not a pop band. All I can attribute it to, is time after time, we'd hear people say, ‘at first I thought it was boring and then a year later I revisited it and I love it'."

We'll late you wait for the issue to read the rest of the interview, but meanwhile, enjoy the sneak visual preview, above.

So here's the scoop on the album, along with details on the band's upcoming tour, direct from Grizzly Bear Ground Zero....

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Upon releasing their acclaimed debut album, Yellow House in 2006, Grizzly Bear - comprising of singer/songwriter Ed Droste, drummer Christopher Bear, woodwinds player/bassist Chris Taylor and singer/songwriter/guitarist Daniel Rossen - have become one of independent music's most internationally-renowned talents. Tours opening for Radiohead, Feist and TV On The Radio, co-headlining a show with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, playing on David Letterman and Conan O'Brien, participating in a five-night tribute to Paul Simon at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and performing their own BAM show with the Brooklyn Philharmonic solidified their well-deserved reputation as one of the most exciting, unique and truly adventurous bands to come out of New York City in years.  Yellow House's twilight-lit charm and sleepy Sunday morning glow won the hearts of music fans all over the globe. Their ever growing fan base has given rise to an almost pathological thirst for new material, with websites and blogs speculating on the new songs and tracking every rumor or nugget of information throughout the recording process.

 
Produced by the band's own Chris Taylor, Veckatimest - named for a Massachusetts island the band visited during recording - is a stunning collection of twelve songs, featuring guest turns by composer Nico Muhly (whose string parts grace four of the tracks) and Beach House's Victoria LeGrand. It's an album of homespun elegance, bubbling with orchestral flourishes, haunted harmony vocals by all four band members, and a graceful, unrestrained beauty.  Splitting their time between recordings in Cape Cod and a church hall in their native Brooklyn, Grizzly Bear's attention to details in the studio is felt on every track. The songs and arrangements are more complex than any of their previous compositions, a result of the band writing together in solitude for months on end.  Despite their many layers, there remains a sparse, singular quality to these tracks that ultimately makes them so affecting - in between their fine lines are slow-burning emotions and dynamic melodies. Veckatimest is ultimately confident and delicate, sophisticated and alive; a line no one walks with quite as much panache as Grizzly Bear.

 
With opener "Southern Point," Veckatimest exudes a quiet strength, as drums roll, percussion sparkles, acoustic guitars pitter-patter and strings sweep in behind Droste's emotive vocal delivery.  "Two Weeks" - already known to fans from a 2008 David Letterman performance - is otherworldly pop complemented perfectly by Victoria LeGrand's swirling backing vocals, while "Fine For Now" lilts with choral castles of voices and gorgeous, reverb-bathed guitars.  "Ready, Able" radiates with tempo shifts, a psychedelic organ part, plucked guitars and swooping backing vocals, and "While You Wait For The Others" is heart-pounding pop encased in feathery harmonies whose deceptively simple chorus has one of the album's finest melodic hooks.  Closing song "Foreground" fills a plaintive piano line with an angelic choir, hollow drums and four-part singing to a dazzling effect. Truth told, though, this sort of dizzying high is what their legions of ardent fans have come to expect from Grizzly Bear, and on Veckatimest, they deliver it and then some.

 
Grizzly Bear Tour Dates:

5/24 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theatre
5/25 George, WA @ Sasquatch Festival
5/26 Vancouver, BC @ Commodore
5/28 NYC @ Town Hall
5/29 NYC @ Town Hall
6/01 Washington DC @ 930 Club
6/02 Philadelphia, PA @ Trocadero
6/03 Boston, MA @ Berkley Performance Center
6/04 Montreal, QUE @ Le National
6/05 Toronto ON @ Phoenix
6/07 Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
6/08 Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theatre
6/09 Bloomington, IN @ Buskirk- Chumley
6/11 Carrboro, NC @ Cats Cradle
6/12 Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo
6/13 Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle (With TV On The Radio)
6/15 Dallas, TX @  Grenada
6/16 Austin, TX @ The Parish
6/19 Los Angeles, CA @ Wiltern
6/20- Los Angeles, CA @ Wiltern
6/21 San Francisco, CA @ Fillmore
6/22- San Francisco @ Fillmore

[Photo Taken Exclusively for Blurt by Dennis Kleiman]