Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear

Rating - 8.3

       So I, like most indie-enthusiasts, have been listening to this album for well over a month in some shape or another despite it's actual release date being this past Tuesday. Before this album, I  had a passing farmiliarity with Grizzly Bear. I'd heard "Knife" and a few other tracks from 2006's Yellow House, I knew of their close association with one of my favorite band's Animal Collective (a connection I still don't understand, is Grizzly Bear Panda Bear's cousin or something?), and I was for a short time obsessed with their Dark Was The Night and Friends EP track "Deep Blue Sea."

       But with Veckatimest they've come to occupy a place very different from all of those previous impressions, one less like their brethren Collective and more like the texture-pop of Yeasayer or Bon Iver's louder side. And more than a sonic connection to those acts, there is a unified feeling of purpose, a sense of meticulous production, intense soundscaping, and an end product that is extremely refined. The arrangements are interesting most of the time, with the baroque-meets-Stravinsky string section becoming an integral part of this album. Ed Droste's vocals float in a lazy fashion, which sounds great atop the rhythmic punches of the arrangements.

       For all it's perfections, though, Veckatimest still sounds a bit stale, particularly in it's middle third, with the band settling comfortably into a steady motion. This may be an unfortunate result of the excellence of the openers and closers of this album, but somewhere around "Cheerleader" through "About Face" its B-side at best. I've listened to this album more than any other over the past month, yet I still feel like I don't get it. If this is the best album of the year (as so many have claimed) it certainly doesn't feel like it. There are a couple things about Grizzly Bear and Veckatimest that I do get:

1. "Two Weeks" is the shit! The great video that came out last week was icing on the cake for this track, as it balances spritely piano against vibrant harmonies with a perfect pace.

2. Veckatimest Island is an uninhabited island off of the Massachusetts coast. Thanks for the geography lesson, guys.

       But thats about it. And maybe that's what this album is meant to be: A Mystery. Like the Free Jazz pioneers (Coleman, Ayler) that Grizzly Bear takes so much influence from, Veckatimest may make more sense in a few years. Of course, by then, they'll be releasing a Ghettotech album sung in Esperanto....