Alright, I know it's past due, but I needed to release a homage to one of my favorite artists at the moment....(I'll keep it short but sweet).
For a band that released no new music in 2008, Grizzly Bear certainly had a busy year. First there was a performance in which the Los Angeles Philharmonic served as the most unlikely opening act in indie-rock history. Then there were five shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where they were asked by Paul Simon to perform a few of his songs for a career retrospective. Previously unheard songs were debuted on The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brian, and the band was the handpicked opening act for Radiohead. But by the end of the year, the Brooklyn quartet remained just as mysterious and indefinable as they had been at the beginning, as if repeated exposure had only added another layer of content to digest for a band whose music already didn't make for easy one-sentence descriptors. Perhaps it's easiest to understand Grizzly Bear by recognizing what they aren't.
Compare them to other recent NYC buzz bands and the difference becomes clearer. They aren't the head of a stylistic movement like the strokes. They have no outstanding, charismatic member like Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They have no unified visual motif like Interpol. But what they do have is one of the most distinctive, transcendent sounds of any band in indie rock, part lush psych-pop harmonies, part avante-garde textural experimentation.
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks - Live on Later with Jools Holland on the BBC
Grizzly Bear - All We Ask (Black Cab Sessions Chapter 79)
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