Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
List Price:
Our Price: $5.77
You Save: $9.22 (62%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.24 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
CD Details
Artist: Grizzly BearEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2009-05-26
Music Label: Warp Records
Soundtracks:
- Southern Point
- Two Weeks
- All We Ask
- Fine For Now
- Cheerleader
- Dory
- Ready, Able
- About Face
- Hold Still
- While You Wait For The Others
- I Live With You
- Foreground
Music reviews of Veckatimest
Music Review: Veckatimest
Rating: 5 Stars
In the three years following Grizzly Bear's full-band debut, Yellow House, Edward Droste and company didn't exactly take great pains to keep the details of their new record a secret. And we, the indie faithful, paid very close attention. We read Stereogum and Pitchfork, lingered on Droste's modest eloquence when he granted interviews to a smattering of publications. We learned that the record was conceived and written at the famous Glen Tonche estate in upstate New York, recorded at Droste's grandmother's home off Cape Cod, and completed in a church in New York City. We learned that the songs were written by all four members--Droste (guitar), Daniel Rossen (guitar), Christopher Bear (drums) and Chris Taylor (bass/woodwinds/electronics)--instead of Droste and Rossen only. We learned that Nico Muhly would provide string arrangements on several tracks, and that Beach House's Victoria Legrand would sing on one ("Two Weeks"). We breathed a sigh of relief when "Cheerleader", an album track released earlier in the year, didn't let us down. Some of us even managed to hear an awful quality rip of the record months prior to its release, although this was certainly not the band's intention. It's almost as if Veckatimest came, saw, conquered and peaced out before stores even began to sell it.
And yet, few of us could have expected something as flat-out wonderful as this. Veckatimest doesn't call attention to itself and seems humbled in the manner of groups with far fewer personnel who play at a far lower volume. But at this point in history we'd be idiots to think that modesty can keep brilliant songwriters from vaulting to the head of the class, and Grizzly Bear have quietly produced a standout, both in their own catalogue and in 2009. They've done it, presumably, by taking their months in abeyance to focus on what's worked for them and what has not, and then tweaking the nuts and bolts of their design accordingly. We often wish for our cherished bands to grow and develop between releases (having our cake), but we also want them to retain their essence and a sense of their own identity in the metamorphosis (eating it, too). Grizzly Bear answer our call by resisting any urges to record Yellow Duplex as they resurface with a fully formed work of art only they could have engendered.
It's somewhat ironic that on the group's most refined record, the one thing that hasn't changed is Yellow House`s iffiest element. That would be the sound quality, whose musty, shopworn timbre had several otherwise laudatory critics (e.g., Mark Richardson) straddling the fence. I can see where they're coming from. If the willfully low fidelity lent Yellow House the air of a time capsule, unearthed and played on the Victrola for the first time in decades, it also failed to flatter the instrumentation and complex melodies winding through the disc. I'd go a step further and say that it aided the process of weighing down the hooks, many of which were quite heavy anyway. But Veckatimest is a much more aerated and chromatically varied record by nature, and the levity gives the band's prototypical sound an entirely new definition. In this context, it's no longer rough and grizzled but shimmering and bright, fluttering with the most subdued of vibrations. The sound may have deadened Yellow House a bit, but it causes Veckatimest to feel utterly alive, all of the time.
Whether it was planned from the beginning or just a serendipitous coincidence, I can't think of a better time for Warp to release Veckatimest than on the cusp between spring and summer, when things often go from good to excellent and people's sense of their own aliveness peaks. The trio of leadoff tracks references travel and beating inertia, lyrically and musically. Over dusty, rolling acoustic guitars and a rhythmic cadence that reminds me of a horse's quick trot, Droste sings the album's first words in an auspicious tone: "Our haven on the southern point is calling us / And faced with all the obvious, so carry us." In the thunderous chorus, it appears he's already made it there: "You'll never find me now." We believe him because the song he's offered us--a five-minute pop number with propulsive momentum and an aura of optimism--makes it difficult to find his old band anywhere inside of it. "Two Weeks" springs out into daylight like a recuperated kid after two weeks of bed rest, its boogie-woogie piano and vocal exultations of "OH-oh, OH-oh, WHOA-oh!" sporting confidence and resoluteness. What is it they ask for on the third track, "All We Ask"? "Another voice / Lead us on, lead us on."
There's a clear desire for new energy here, and they've found it, in part, by pulling all four heads together during conception and welcoming the panoply of ideas that came forth. As a result, Veckatimest is an embarrassment of riches. Scores of countermelodies are assimilated into the overall tableaus, enhancing their musicality without distracting from their main ideas. (Credit the sound quality for this, too; its fuzzy texture blurs the lines between individual instruments and leaves a singular entity in their place.) The technique works as well on a grabber like "Two Weeks" as it does on the less immediate "Cheerleader", which reaches back to a fading glitzy nostalgia with swaying rhythms, American Bandstand guitars, Muhly's wonderfully sappy strings and Droste's falsetto that lingers in the air long after the track ends. "I Live With You" is by turns intimate and effulgent, starting as a crumbly, one-chord strum that unwittingly picks up a choir, a brass section, woodwinds, and as many electronic effects as there are buttons to push on the keyboard. Yet the band sounds just as secure when they aren't filling in the entire canvas, as on the sweet "Hold Still", where Droste sings over guitar ambience and a memorable plucked riff that float up and disappear into the campfire-lit night sky.
In contrast to Veckatimest`s beginning, and indeed to Yellow House, these more hushed songs have a relationship to travel and domesticity that isn't easy to explain. To my ears they have a preoccupation with physical space; as they expand and shrink back, the group seems to be aware of how much room is available to occupy. They don't feel particularly housebound either, but when they take flight they remain connected to the earth and in the realm of the corporeal. On "Dory", the protagonist imagines himself and a companion swimming "like two dories let loose in the bay," though the song appears to exist on the front porch of a summer hideout during the imagination stage, rather than on the water. Yet the air is still fresh, the scenery unique. In this regard, Veckatimest and Beach House's similarly toned Devotion (2008) strike me as two sides of the same coin. The journeys we took on Devotion were too starry and idealistic to be true, as if we dreamed them up from the safety of our bedrooms. Veckatimest moves us around the sylvan American landscape in search of comfortable places to settle down.
Grizzly Bear have always possessed this je ne sais quoi way of making their music sound as old as the animal that shares their namesake. But on this, their finest record, they've joined their contemporaries in Fleet Foxes by casting oldness in a new light. Although it's rooted in contemporary rock, Veckatimest is essentially era-less, inspired less by the specific music of their forebears and more by the wistfulness and sentimentality that enshroud it. As such, the band has succeeded in overturning the common assumption--held by the youth of this generation, who are the ones most likely to listen to this--that anything too old is bound to be frumpy and staid. But even more significant is that Veckatimest proves that a record doesn't have to carry so much darn weight to still feel important. The band has swapped out the six-minute epics of Yellow House for a greater number of shorter works, packed with just as many concepts but integrated with more skill and with more respect for the pieces as holistic edifices containing a single incredible idea at each of their centers. In the process, they've written their most instantly memorable songs to date. All bets aren't necessarily off in terms of whether or not Grizzly Bear have hit their plateau--recall that we did this with Yellow House in 2006; oops--but it's hard to imagine them giving us more to enjoy in one sweeping statement than they have here.
(This was published in PopMatters on 5/26/09)
Description of Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear released Yellow House in 2006. It was a slow, steady and stunning ride, and given the album s otherworldly charm and staying power, it s hard to believe three years have gone by.That might seem like a long time. But given Grizzly Bear s hectic touring schedule, including stints with Radiohead, TV On The Radio and Feist as well as several performances during a five-night tribute to Paul Simon at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a co-headlining show with the L.A. Philharmonic, and the release of Friend, a 10-song EP of re-recorded and re-worked songs, collaborations and covers all this seems reasonable. They ve been busy.
But about a year ago, singer/songwriter Ed Droste, drummer Christopher Bear, woodwinds player/bassist Chris Taylor and singer/songwriter/guitarist Daniel Rossen who s other band, Department of Eagles, released the sublime In Ear Park last fall began passing demos around, and working together creatively in different pairs and permutations. A few months later they set off with producer/engineer Chris Taylor s mobile recording rig to begin the recording process for Veckatimest, which would unfold over the next six months in three very singular locations. And in many ways, it is the recording process that reveals this record each space catalyzing different interactions, inspirations, and ultimately, songs.
In July, the band spent three weeks at the Glen Tonche house in upstate New York. Though still finding their feet, much of the album s groundwork was laid there. After breaking briefly for the Radiohead tour in August, the band convened at a house on Cape Cod, graciously provided by Droste s grandmother, where they re-addressed and solidified the compositions they d started at Glen Tonche. Lastly, Grizzly Bear came home, to a church in NYC, to fine-tune and complete the album named Veckatimest after a tiny, uninhabited island on Cape Cod that the band visited and was inspired by, particularly liking its Native American name. Artist William O'Brien created Veckatimest s colorful, hand drawn artwork a perfect compliment to the album s enigmatic title.
There is an unbelievable clarity of sound and vision to Veckatimest: vocals (a duty shared by all band members) are sharper and more complex, arrangements are tighter, production is more venturous and lyrics more affecting. Having opened the creative dialogue at such an early stage, Grizzly Bear was able to realize these 12 songs together as a band, making it their most collaboratively compositional album to date.
This yielded an unexpected mix of material that feels more confident, mature, focused and most of all, dynamic. From songs like 'Dory' (a gracefully psychedelic, ever-evolving work),'Ready Able' (a synth-y opus, and one of four songs that boasts string arrangements by composer Nico Muhly) and 'Foreground' (a plaintive, vocal-driven send-off, and one of two songs to feature choral arrangements also by Muhly) to more resounding pop songs like 'Two Weeks' (an other-worldly doo wop featuring backing vocals from Beach House s Victoria LeGrand) and 'While You Wait For the Others' (a triumphant and melodically cacophonous pop masterpiece), Veckatimest is an album of the highest highs and lowest lows an unbelievably diverse collection of songs that celebrates the strength of each band member, and the power of the whole. It was well worth the wait.
Grizzly Bear?s third album is a modern masterpiece of chamber-pop music, comprised of lush, smooth songs that beautifully evoke the New England seaside where it was recorded. On the sublime ?Cheerleader,? drums patter and guitars gently reverberate as frontman Ed Droste muses, ?Maybe this time we?ll grow.? That much is true--as spectacular as was the group?s previous effort, Yellow House, the songs of Veckatimest flow together much more exquisitely, a gulf stream of intricate arrangements and lyrical harmonies. While the terrific singles have justifiably received much attention--?Two Weeks? begins with a plinking piano intro before dropping into the sweetly swooning melody; the guitar and vocals of ?While You Wait for the Others? start and stutter before launching into the dazzling chorus--it?s the slow-burning songs like ?All We Ask? and ?Ready, Able,? shimmering with madrigal-esque vocal rounds, that lend the record a certain eminence. The album ends on such an august note; ?Foreground" is one of the best closing tracks in recent memory. As the piano quietly cantillates, Droste sings, ?Something about this might / Take all evening.? It?s a song of twilight, a farewell bid to the burst of summer and light that is Veckatimest. --Erin K. Thompson
Alternative Rock CDs
Music Genres
Bestsellers in Alternative Rock CDs
Bouncing Souls - Maniacal LaughterRelease date: 1996-01-26; Music CD
Best price: $30.00
Blondie - Parallel LinesRelease date: 1994-07-29; Music CD
Best price: $149.98
Doors - L.A. WomanRelease date: 1993-04-09; Music CD
Best price: $99.99
Amon Duul - Phallus DeiRelease date: 1997-04-08; Music CD
Price in other shops:
Tangerine Dream - MelroseRelease date: 1990-10-02; Music CD
Best price: $74.98
Tangerine Dream - Private Music of Tangerine DreamRelease date: 1992-11-10; Music CD
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
![Ska Explosion [VHS] Image](/images/Ska-Explosion-VHS-6303381014-X.jpg){kind=small}
Ska Explosion [VHS]Cleopatra; Release date: 1995-02-28; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
![Little Earthquakes [VHS] Image](/images/Little-Earthquakes-VHS-6302488664-X.jpg){kind=small}
Little Earthquakes [VHS]Atlantic / Wea; Release date: 1992-11-10; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $12.50
Price in other shops:
Exileby Geoffrey Oryema
Music CD
Best price: $4.95
![Louder Than Live [VHS] Image](/images/Louder-Than-Live-VHS-6301627865-X.jpg){kind=small}
Soundgarden - Louder Than Live [VHS]A&M Video; Release date: 1991-07-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $192.68
Similar CDs
Real Estate - DaysRelease date: 2011-10-18; Music CD
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
Grimes - VisionsRelease date: 2012-02-21; Music CD
Best price: $8.05
Price in other shops:
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness BluesRelease date: 2011-05-03; Music CD
Best price: $8.79
Price in other shops:
Beirut - The Flying Club CupRelease date: 2007-10-09; Music CD
Best price: $8.90
Price in other shops:
![In Ear Park [Vinyl] Image](/images/In-Ear-Park-Vinyl-B001GC9VWY-X.jpg)
Department of Eagles - In Ear Park [Vinyl]Release date: 2008-11-11; Music CD
Best price: $19.37
Price in other shops:
![Teen Dream [CD + DVD] Image](/images/Teen-Dream-CD-DVD-B002ZIAC26-X.jpg)
Beach House - Teen Dream [CD + DVD]Release date: 2010-01-26; Music CD
Best price: $9.96
Price in other shops:
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post PavilionRelease date: 2009-01-20; Music CD
Best price: $10.62
Price in other shops:
Daniel Rossen - Silent Hour / Golden MileRelease date: 2012-03-20; Music CD
Best price: $6.04
Price in other shops:
Grizzly Bear - Yellow HouseBaker & Taylor; Release date: 2006-09-05; Music CD
Best price: $8.94
Price in other shops:
Fleet Foxes - Fleet FoxesFLEET FOXES; Release date: 2008-06-03; Music CD
Best price: $8.76
Price in other shops: