Grizzly Bear- Yellow House

Grizzly Bear, a Brooklyn band you may not have heard from yet, but soon will, has the strange, yet comforting ability to make you feel and see both gray skies and rainbows dancing around in your head at the same time. On Yellow House, Edward Droste, and Christopher Bear’s sophomore effort, they manage to bring a sound that tends to mash up psyche-folk with gloomy pop melodies. Which, much like for TV on the Radio, and Animal Collective, it tends to work well for them, while Grizzly Bear have put themselves at the forefront of this movement of sound. Harkening both Brian Wilson and John Lennon on the wonderful track the Knife, Droste brings a haunting tone to lyrics like “I want you to know…when I look in your eyes…with every blow…comes another lie…” that still manages to keep you smiling and giddy throughout. I must say also, that the atmosphere on this album is as thick as the earth’s crust, as you could listen to this album thirty plus times and still pinpoint new instruments and electronic blips you completely missed in the earlier listens. On their previous effort ‘Horn of Plenty’, Grizzly was a two-piece, and now boasts four very contributing members who spent a lot of time at a tiny yellow Cape Cod home to record this masterpiece of sound. The track Little Brother stands out for me as well, a piece made up of country riffs, lathered with synths, harps, and flute notes creating a mindbender of a folk song for the new tye-dye crowd. Before this album, I hadn’t heard a truly menacing psychedelic folk song, but the song Plans has done me in on that thought, making me wonder what Marilyn Manson would have been like had he grown up handing out flowers at Woodstock. Overall, an album of such grandiose sonic achievement, that words won’t do it justice, if you’re looking for an original album this fall that has a sound you’ll still be talking about next year, than Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House is the autumn album for you.

Artist Website/contact- www.grizzly-bear.net