[.ca] Yellow House

From Amazon.com:
It's a rare thing to find a band that counts the glockenspiel, autoharp, banjo, and flute as key instruments, especially when it's a rock band with just four members. Grizzly Bear use all the above instruments plus another dozen or so to make the 10 floating, gossamer, low-lit tunes that comprise Yellow House. They are rounded edges, off-kilter waltzes ("Lullabye," which teeters tipsily), laconic vignettes, and even a vintage 1930s waltz written by singer Edward Droste's great-aunt. The meshwork here is Grizzly Bear's smarts, a banjo lending fleeting rhythmic hints to a guitar-picked melody ("Reprise"), a haunted piano filling the sonic air with smoke. All four members sing duskily and softly, making a slow-going atmosphere that would delight the great composer Morton Feldman. The brilliance here is that every song mesmerizes, not with aural dominance but with an atmospheric magnetism. --Andrew Bartlett

grizzly bear:
Edward Droste follows his group's lo-fi debut Horn of Plenty by employing a fulltime band, moving to Warp, and expanding his ambition and sound. Here Grizzly Bear revel in their attention to detail, dividing songs into mini-suites and creating a palpable atmosphere by mixing live instruments with indistinct sounds and slippery electronics. They've also stepped up their songwriting, assembling melodies that proceed in a logical fashion but never sound overused or overly familiar. The result is a major step forward for the group, as well as one of the year's best records.

Each day, I spend it with you:
Grizzly Bear have been around for awhile, but "Yellow House" is their first album as a complete, cohesive quartet band. And it's a stunning piece of work, layering together ethereal freakfolk and gentle rock'n'roll into an eerily earthy sound -- it's like listening to a folk band made up of ghosts. It opens with a run-through of the instrumentation -- a flute smoothing out into a wobbly violin, and some tinny piano. After a moment of silence, the band slips into "Easier," with its folky banjo/guitar melody wrapped in gentle shimmering synth. And the lyrics hint at broken houses and broken loves: "I know, I know, the doors won't close/the pipes all froze/just let it go...let's recreate an easier time/because I still can't find you." They follow it up with an earthier song, "Lullabye," which meanders uncertainly through mostly acoustic territory, but with the occasional synthy chime. The songs that follow are in this mold -- ghostly rockers and fizzly, windy ballads. Each one starts off simple and slow, but builds up into atmospheric and powerful pieces of work. If you just hear a sample or skip through it, "Yellow House" sounds like your basic folk-rock album. Not much to listen to. But listen to some of the songs in their entirety, and the beauty of their music really starts to stick out -- it's sort of glitchy shimmery freakfolk psychedelica, with a bit of lo-fi indie-rock thrown in for good measure. They have a dud every now and then -- the first halves of "On a Neck, On a Spit" and "Reprise" are too banjoey and straightforward to fit in. However, the rest of the time they craft their music exquisitely -- the instrumentation and vocals are layered together into hypnotic swirls, sometimes fading out to give it that ghostly sound. The instrumentation itself is a beautiful blend of all sorts of instruments -- some straightforward guitar and restrained banjo, some echoing glockenspiel and a soft flute. And the entire album is shrouded in dark, unearthly synth from Chris Taylor, ranging from glitches to wavers, misty fuzz to a twittering sound like a moth's wings. All four members contribute their vocals, and their intertwined, mournful voices are absolutely stunning. They could sing just about anything and make it sound pretty -- in fact, "Colorado" is mostly made up of mournful calls of the title word. The other songs usually have a few more lines than that, but are pared down to the core: "A folding chair/Sitting out by the wading pool, chlorine blue/Rush of wind passing over me/Restless nights/Chin up, cheer up/My love's another kind..." Grizzly Bear craft a beautiful, delicate collection of freakfolky tunes with a psychedelic edge, an exquisite listen that takes a little while to sink in. "Yellow House" should be lived in.

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