Yellow House — Grizzly Bear
Warp
2006
Rating:


Edward Droste, the founder of Grizzly Bear and once its only member, made his debut "Horn of Plenty" in his Brooklyn apartment. For "Yellow House," Droste added drummer/producer Chris Bear, bassist/clarinetist Chris Taylor and guitarist Daniel Rossen and largely recorded the album in the yellow home of his childhood outside of Boston. The result is a bigger, grander Grizzly Bear that still retains the alternative folk charms of Animal Collective.

But Grizzly Bear is no freak-folk outfit; there's a relative grasp of song structure here and an even stronger ability to fashion a melodic hook. Opener "Easier," for instance, begins with Taylor on flute and clarinet, an old-fashioned piano lick from Rossen, Bear's shuffling snare and doo-wop vocal harmonies like a folksy Beach Boys. "The Knife" is even more in debt to Brian Wilson and pop stylings of the 1960s. There's an atmospheric, laid-back quality to the guitar work and "aw-whoos" here so that it sounds like Love's Arthur Lee and "Loaded"-era Lou Reed singing together, waiting for the tide to rise. "Marla" stretches back even further for inspiration. Written by Droste's great-great-aunt Marla Forbes in the 1930s, Grizzly Bear and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallet (who gave Arcade Fire its orchestrations) lovingly resurrect Forbes' "You Can't Go Without That" as a waltz down a haunted rabbit hole in search of a French horn, a sheepskin-lined coat, clamshells and a drill.

"Lullabye" is decidedly more freakish. A cheery melody replete with xylophone and flute melodies that sound like birds is stopped in its tracks by an electrified strum and replaced with chomping guitars, crashing drums and an admonition by Droste to "cheer up." "Little Brother" is similarly broken up, forgoing a song that starts with banjo-picking, clapping and boot-stomping to pick up a melody that's almost more Mediterranean in nature. "Colorado" abandons all preconceived notions of the band's tendencies for an electrifying and atmospheric Gregorian chant. "When I clung to you there was nothing to hold on tight with," Droste sings, "you left me adrift."

The album's masterpiece is the complexly structured "On a Neck, On a Spit." Ringing acoustic guitars and banjoes highlight such sentiments as, "You can't go home again / Each time it's different" and "All my time, spend it with you now." The song garners speed and intensity following a breakdown of fat guitar plucking until it turns into a full-on barnstormer that builds to a freight train of catharsis and a gentle denouement. This is a magnificent six minutes of acoustic passion and Wall of Sound transcendence, the kind of song that's easy to spend all your time with.

Posted Friday, December 1, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/grizzly.bear/yellow.house