Grizzly Bear

Thu 21st May, 2009 in Features

Indie-folk has experienced a boom period in the last decade with the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver and Okkervil River taking sensitive and literate music to a new level of popularity. The advent of blogging and the way in which fans generate both real and virtual communities has contributed to a healthy and divergent scene. Grizzly Bear are riding the pre-release wave of indie hype with their new album Veckatimest and a maturing sound, rich with dashes of soul, folk and baroque pop.

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Dan Rossen is in the midst of interviews and TV appearances ahead of the album’s release. Days out from another performance to four million Letterman viewers, he admits to feelings of both fear and excitement. “We did Letterman once before, we debuted Two Weeks on Letterman. We’d never played anywhere before then, I hadn’t played in front of anybody so that was pretty weird,” Rossen recalls. “It’ll be a bit more relaxed this time.”

Named after a small island in Dukes County, Massachusetts, Veckatimest is the reason behind all of the activity in the Grizzly Bear camp. The album was recorded in three distinct locations: a mountain studio in upstate New York, a Cape Cod beach house and finally a NYC church.

“We were lucky enough to be given access to some amazing locations and get out of the city and think and record. Especially upstate New York, which was at one time a studio but had fallen out of use. It was this huge beautiful recording space: a gigantic, beautiful wooden room overlooking the mountains. When someone offers that to you, you take it.” Having bassist Chris Taylor as producer/engineer also meant they could utilise his mobile recording setup and have the freedom to record when and where they wanted.

Grizzly Bear’s previous album Yellow House was released in 2006. It was followed by years of touring, so there were doubts about how to approach the new record. “We didn’t really have a plan exactly,” Rossen admits. “It was three years since we did Yellow House, so we weren’t too sure what to expect.”

As writing and recording sessions developed, a plan did slowly emerge and with it a desire to not get bogged down in the process, as Rossen explains, “This record was about keeping things very fresh and new and kinda fun and spontaneous by recording the first iteration of the song idea and working from there and building the arrangement as a band.”

One of the overwhelming impressions of Veckatimest is the way the band has allowed space for the songs to breathe. Their beautiful vocals are never buried within the music. “A big challenge of this record was scaling back a bit because on we had a tendency on Yellow House to just layer and layer and layer and make everything as huge as possible. We were trying to keep the fewest elements necessary for the song to translate in the way that we wanted to.”

The voices of all members – and in particular Rossen and Ed Droste – are a rich and opulent revelation. Harmonies swell from the songs in the heartwarming way that Fleet Foxes nailed so perfectly on their debut. Touring so much played a big part in developing this aspect of Grizzly Bear’s music.

“Everyone has changed in terms of their singing. I had never even performed live before joining Grizzly Bear so it took me a good few years to figure out how to sing properly at all or sing remotely well,” Rossen confesses. “It’s a confidence thing. Being forced to sing loudly in front of a lot of people makes you do weird things and you figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. Everybody’s really grown a lot as performers and singers since going on tour.”

A sneak preview of where Grizzly Bear were heading was last year’s In Ear Park, by Rossen’s side project Department Of Eagles. Not a million miles from the sound of Grizzly Bear, one wonders how Rossen divides his songs between bands. “Well that record was a very specific set of songs that were either really old, or things that I’d been working on with Fred [Nicolaus] for a really long time,” Rossen explains. “We’ve talked about it for years and there were a few songs that were nostalgic that didn’t really fit into the Grizzly Bear repertoire.”

Department Of Eagles fans may have to savour In Ear Park. “I don’t even know if there will be another Department Of Eagles record, that might be the one. The project is really casual and completely depends on if the material is there and if we want to do it.”

From here Grizzly Bear face the American TV audience, before hitting the road with their new batch of psych folk pop songs. An audibly excited Rossen confirms that a visit to Australian shores seems assured for the start of 2010.

“Yeah! We are going to come down in January. There is a festival that moves from city to city that we are doing. We’re really excited about it, it’ll be brilliant.”

Only 8 months to wait then, just enough time for fans to immerse themselves in the giddy, melancholic beauty of Veckatimest.

Veckatimest is out Saturday 23 May on Warp through Inertia. It’s FasterLouder’s Album Of The Week – read the review here.