Grizzly Bear
Brooklyn zoo: There's something in the water in Brooklyn, because it's home to the most talked-about musical scene since Montreal was on everybody's lips. Sufjan Stevens, The Fiery Furnaces, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, TV on the Radio and The Animal Collective have all been turning ears, but the most hyped Brooklyn act of the moment are neo-folkies Grizzly Bear, who share The Animal Collective's zoological nomenclature and much of their distinctive sound. Ed Droste began working on 2004's under-the-radar debut Horn of Plenty before coincidentally named drummer Christopher Bear added some polish and percussion to the record. Chris Taylor joined after the album surfaced, and guitarist Daniel Rossen soon made them a quartet. New album Yellow House, due in September, is their first as a four-piece, and critics have been hailing it as a big leap forward.
If you go down to the woods today: Grizzly Bear's sound is not dissimilar to the new folk recently popularised by Devendra Banhart and co, but there's also a defiant pop influence (think freak folk as played by the Beach Boys). As a joke, Droste coined "wood-tempo" and "cave-core" to describe the band's sound. The meaningless tags have stuck, though they now prefer "bewilderock". To add to the ambiguity, Grizzly Bear have signed to Warp records, principally an electonica label renowned as the home to Aphex Twin and Autechre. A Horn of Plenty remix album, with mixes by Efterklang and Dntel, confirmed that neo-folk doesn't fully describe the band's music.
Not Grizzly Adams, not Gentle Ben: The hype machine has been in overdrive since Yellow House started doing the rounds, and Grizzly Bear have been receiving plaudits way in advance of the album's launch, with a lot of MP3 blogs calling it the album of the year. On past internet-hype form, this means the backlash should be getting underway just before the release date. Droste pens an off-the-wall blog himself on the band's website (www.grizzly-bear.net), complete with holiday photographs and MP3s. All the hype has made Droste something of a poster boy for the gay indie music scene, along with regular collaborators Owen Pallett (better known as Final Fantasy and string arranger for The Arcade Fire) and British electronic composer Simon Bookish.
Songs for Goldilocks: For Yellow House, Droste drew on his family's legacy by reworking a song by his great aunt Marla Forbes. Forbes died in the 1940s after spending much of her life trying, and failing, to make it as a singer. None of her recordings were thought to have survived, until one of Droste's relatives unearthed them a few years ago. The track, Marla, is one of the slow-burning, dusty highlights of the album.
