Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
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CD Details
Artist: Grizzly BearBrand: Baker & Taylor
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2006-09-05
Model: 0801061014728
Music Label: Warp Records
Soundtracks:
- Easier
- Lullabye
- Knife
- Central And Remonte
- Little Brother
- Plans
- Marla
- On A Neck, On A Spit
- Reprise
- Colorado
Music reviews of Yellow House
Music Review: Takes a while for the murk to open up, but when it does...
Rating: 5 Stars
At first, it seemed odd that techno/IDM label Warp Records would release a sleepy folk album with acoustic guitars. But it turned out to be a perfect fit. Yellow House sounds like a folk album with an IDM production. If Aphex Twin were to make like Brian Eno and produce other people's music, the results might sound kind of like this.
The basic core of the songs is in the folk style, and has nothing to do with electronica. The music consists of gentle, intricate acoustic guitar playing (the delicate, technically proficient passages in "Easier" and "On A Neck, On A Spit" made me think of Pink Moon), some piano, with modest folksy tones in the vocals and some instruments like the banjo. But this music is filtered through a rich, highly detailed IDM production. Songs are full of odd ambient noises, which blend in with the rhythm track. The piano is submerged in beautiful ghostly echo, and the melodious sound of the piano seems to reach up out of unidentifiable, soft drone.
Take the song "Knife." This is maybe the best-known song off the album, because it's the simplest and most accessible. It is based on a very simple 4/4 electric guitar chug and an appealingly lazy, sleepy vocal drawl. There's even a discernible vocal hook; it's somewhat unconventional, consisting mostly of the odd way in which the vocalist draws out the end of each line. Overall, though, it's pretty standard stuff. The strange part comes at the end, after the vocal part is over. With no warning, the guitar chug sinks down into a swampy ambient backdrop. The song becomes very quiet; the sound is pleasant, but just a little unsettling, and it really makes one think of getting lost in the forest and stumbling upon a still marsh. Then, a series of pretty piano chords floats out of the murk and dissipates. It is a very weird and beautiful turnaround.
The about-face in "Little Brother" is even better. This song is also conventional, with twangy guitar and vocals that could pass for country music if they were more energetic. But at the end, all that vanishes abruptly, and the song is brought to a standstill by what sounds like a chant in an abandoned, remote cathedral. The voices, muffled by echo to the point of being incomprehensible, are quietly commanding, haunting. (A similar distorted choral sound occurs on Underworld's "Crocodile," where it is the highlight of the song, but Grizzly Bear's version is much less slick and conventional -- and also came out earlier.) The constant presence of the layered, echoing production makes it seem like you're hearing the remnant of a recording from long ago.
That idea of sounding old and ancient recurs throughout the album. The lyrics in "Marla" were written decades ago by the grandmother of one of the band members. The music is a basic piano loop in waltz-time, but the production muffles the sound of the piano and adds lots of incidental noises. The lyrics are delivered in a sleepy, barely-there whisper. All this creates a wasted, skeletal atmosphere, like rifling through drawers in an abandoned, crumbling old house, and stumbling upon a box full of yellowed old letters with faded handwriting.
Not all the songs have the same kinds of sudden changes as "Knife," but all of them are brilliantly atmospheric. "Central And Remote" and "Colorado" sound majestic and forbidding. "Central And Remote" puts up a bunch of layers of ambient sounds and vocal overdubs, then suddenly strips them all out and only leaves one voice, chanting in a whisper. "Reprise" reuses one line of lyrics from "Lullabye," but sounds completely different, exchanging the guitar and bass for something much weirder and more ambient.
The lyrics, as you might imagine, are unimportant. The band clearly understood this, and so all the lyrics are printed in the space underneath the CD itself. The liner notes contain only photographs, showing the titular house in more detail. All the band members contribute some vocals, but all the voices are deliberately downplayed and anonymized, and the singing is as quiet as possible. Of course they're deliberately playing up the sense of age and mystery, but the way they evoke that sense is masterful. They surely knew what they were doing here.
The most striking thing about Yellow House is how well it calls to mind the impassive grandeur of nature. "Central And Remote" suggests some kind of view onto a forbidding mountain range. These landscapes don't seem hostile, but they're not idyllic either -- this is the sort of nature that is peaceful, but still makes one a little uncomfortable if one is out in the middle of it when it's getting dark. The ghostly murmur of "Marla" is just slightly uneasy. You get a certain rural feeling from the album, but it's conveyed without either pandering or patronizing. The album uses elements of folk and country, but they are heavily de-emphasized. In the end, it's just as much of an IDM album as a folk album.
Sadly, Grizzly Bear haven't repeated this feat since. Their most recent album Veckatimest sounds much more ordinary, like a light-jazz combo at an upscale restaurant. Yellow House is much less inviting. It is murky and odd, and really requires a very specific mood to fully appreciate. Yet its folk/IDM sound is incredibly original, and when you are in that specific mood, it sounds uniquely beautiful. I highly recommend it to everyone.
Description of Yellow House
"Magical, haunting melodies are Grizzly Bear's mainstay. A band that won't jilt you; they always craft their songs from start to finish--and meticulous instrumentation and arrangements are their specialty. On "Yellow House", Grizzly Bear still flexes its lo-fi connoisseurship, but with a better recording--still totally DIY, now embellished with fine sonic engineering."It's a rare thing to find a band that counts the glockenspiel, autoharp, banjo, and flute as key instruments, especially when it's a rock band with just four members. Grizzly Bear use all the above instruments plus another dozen or so to make the 10 floating, gossamer, low-lit tunes that comprise Yellow House. They are rounded edges, off-kilter waltzes ("Lullabye," which teeters tipsily), laconic vignettes, and even a vintage 1930s waltz written by singer Edward Droste's great-aunt. The meshwork here is Grizzly Bear's smarts, a banjo lending fleeting rhythmic hints to a guitar-picked melody ("Reprise"), a haunted piano filling the sonic air with smoke. All four members sing duskily and softly, making a slow-going atmosphere that would delight the great composer Morton Feldman. The brilliance here is that every song mesmerizes, not with aural dominance but with an atmospheric magnetism. --Andrew Bartlett
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