Where do these wonderful hybrid US bands come from? Is there something in the water? Hailing from Brooklyn, the four prolific members (prolific, they’re going wild with side projects!) Grizzly Bear have painstakingly constructed a chamber-pop, layered sound that is almost impossible to nail down. I can hear XTC, America, Radiohead, ELO, Elliott Smith, some kind of a capella band, Jason Falkner, and Sufjan Stevens. Anchored by an assured, tight rhythm section, Grizzy Bear combines harmony vocals (they all sing) with loping, slow to midpaced melodies, structured with acoustic guitars, piano and orchestration. Like Grandaddy, say, they manage to remain low-key yet rocky.
Veckatimest, the band’s third, oozes studio perfection but delivers sustained listenability. The second track, ‘Two Weeks’ shows them at their most vigorous: a clinking piano figure, then a loping bass chugger, then gorgeous doowop harmonies and we’re into a hazy, summer song that sounds like a chugging remix of a Beach Boys song. At the other extreme, ‘I Live With You’ comprises lead singer Ed Droste crooning love (it kicks off with ‘Been gone too long, don’t make me beg’) over hazy electronics, before building into dramatic crescendo after crescendo, never quite taking off. My highlight is the lurching, soaring combo of ‘While You Wait for the Others,’ an existential lament that surprises and delights every one of its 270 seconds. Veckatimest is one of 2009′s standout albums.