Grizzly Bear
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Grizzly Bear

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“I’m overwhelmed. It’s been so long that it’s a little bit scary to jump back into it, because I know what it’s like, I know how intense it is,” Droste says from his Brooklyn apartment, as he prepares for dinner. “But I’m excited – I’ve never been so excited about performing an album before. I feel so strongly about it – it’s my favourite thing that we will have put out. I know after a couple of the shows I’ll get back into the swing of things, but as I look at all the dates stacked up against us in the next couple of months I’m thinking, ‘Holy shit!’ It’s a bit daunting when I think of all the flying that’s going to be happening. But I’m totally excited, it’s gonna be a blast. That’s ultimately the most exciting part, getting to play the shows. That’s the most rewarding part of all.”

With an exponential rise of acclaim enjoyed by each album released, most notably the best-of poll-frequenting Veckatimest, the pressure to maintain that trajectory could easily become overbearing; as Droste explains, it took a concerted effort to overcome. “We basically tried to isolate ourselves with no internet, no friends, no loved ones. When you focus on such things, you end up writing music with the wrong intentions, the wrong reasons. We left the city, went to the countryside, and after a couple of days – especially without internet – you find yourself forgetting about everything. That’s when the real songs start bubbling up, when the material that means the most to you starts coming,” he explains. “That’s what we did, and we ended up with a surplus of material this time so we were really able to choose the stuff that we felt the strongest about. Which was cool, because in the past we recorded X amount of songs and that was the album – we didn’t have extras or B-sides. We didn’t really focus on that [this time], and if we did, we made note of it and moved on, and tried to clear it from our minds.”

Through its affecting lyrical and tonal signatures, the Grizzly Bear canon has resonated on a personal level with countless listeners across the globe. And that emotive resonance isn’t limited to the fan base, either. “[The songs] represent periods of my life; they’re chapters in the story of my life,” Droste says. “Like when I look back on Horn Of Plenty [Grizzly Bear’s 2004 debut LP], each song represents a different moment, and I think back to when I wrote it and what it means to me. They do mean a lot. That doesn’t mean I sit around listening to my own music each day; we perform them enough, so I think we hear them enough. We have our own connections to our songs, but I’m not going to get married to my own music – well, I’m already married,” he laughs. “We have our own emotional connections to the music we make, that’s part of writing music. If we don’t have an emotional connection with the song to begin with, then we wouldn’t bother writing it anyway. The sort of music we make has to resonate within us somehow; it has to have that emotional heft.”

After a hefty touring schedule following Veckatimest, the band took a relatively lengthy break – and although it was well-deserved, it took time and effort for them to regroup and start producing music as Grizzly Bear again. “We decided to go to Marfa, Texas and try a new environment because we had done so much writing in New England and New York – that whole northeast corridor,” Droste says. “We thought we’d try the desert and see what it’s like, so we rented this crazy old army barracks place in June 2011. It was super fucking hot, 105 degrees [Fahrenheit; 40.5 degrees Celsius] – there were wildfires… It’s actually an amazing town and arts community. If we’d picked a better time of year to go it would have been perfect.”

As it happened, though, it was far from that. “We got there and knew that it wasn’t the right temperature to be there, first off. Secondly, we had taken such a long break away from each other – the four of us hadn’t been in the same room together for eight or nine months – that we needed to take the time to reacquaint ourselves with one another personally, and more so musically. Not that we’d grown apart, but we had definitely grown. As with every album you have to find a common ground with your musical interests, and it took more time because of the break. We recorded 12 songs there, so at the end of it we had these 12 songs and said, ‘You know what? This isn’t the album.’ We knew that and were a bit deflated. But at the same time we knew we had gotten through something, and were on the same page again.”

Even then, it still took effort to hold onto momentum. “We hit a bit of a speedbump because Chris Taylor released his solo record [as CANT], I got married and went on a honeymoon, Dan [Rossen] recorded an EP, Chris Bear was off doing other stuff. We reconvened in December and were so raring to go that we threw all preconceived notions of how we wrote in the past out the window. It used to be [Chris] Bear and I working on songs together, Dan working on songs on his own. So we said screw it, Dan and I were taking each other’s melodies, just hands-on all over the place and so excited about working on new material. Then all of a sudden we were writing tonnes and tonnes of new material,” he recalls. “The majority of the album was written from January up until late April. A couple of things form the Marfa sessions did make it onto the album, onto the Cape Cod sessions where most of the album was done. I think we just needed that time to figure out again where our crossover was, because we’re four very different people with very different perspectives.”

The result from the Cape Cod sessions was Shields, an album full of ornate arrangements which very much sounds like Grizzly Bear. The aural palette builds upon the adventurous tones exhibited on Veckatimest and imbues a grander sense of space, best exhibited on the lush Yet Again. Shields was released amongst an avalanche of big-name releases, with music fans being more than a little spoilt for choice this side of mid-2012. But if Droste is feeling competitive, he isn’t showing it. “It is what it is. It’s not a competition. It’s an exciting time for music and there’s a lot of cool stuff coming out. Everyone’s doing their own thing, I don’t think of it as people jockeying to win a contest. I think a lot of people that comment on blogs might look at it like that, but I don’t.”

BY LACHLAN KANONIUK