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Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
- Though Grizzly Bear began as a solo project of Ed Droste with the 2004 album, “Horn of Plenty,” “Yellow House” is the band’s first album as a proper quartet. For a debut, it exceeds any expectations. The album constantly straddles the line between folk and rock, but that doesn’t begin to capture the group’s unique sound. It is lush and layered with an expansive range of instruments including flutes and glockenspiels, many of the songs built around acoustic guitars and banjos with the occasional splash of abrasive electric guitar. The album also showcases the band’s ability to sing in beautiful four part harmonies, an effect that only further adds to the album’s lush beauty.
The opener, “Easier,” sets a rustic tone of dense intimacy for the whole album, while its arrangement is vast. “Lullaby” is appropriately quieter in the beginning but crescendos with a reassuring chant of “Chin up, Cheer up.” The climax of the song is tremendous with its droning vocals and frantic percussion. “Knife” is the album’s pop single, complete with odd vocal harmonies and a catchy guitar riff. “Central and Remote” is a quieter song that harkens back to the album’s opening textures. “Little Brother” is a faster acoustic piece with complex interlocking guitars and perhaps one of the album’s cleverest arrangements. As singer Rossen sings the song’s final lyrics, “Just put the pillows under my head,” the song suddenly fades into a very dense dreamlike sequence that is best heard in headphones for full appreciation of its mystical, quivering textures. “Plans” is a ballad about a doomed love affair in South America, and features hauntingly dissonant but still beautiful vocal harmonies. “Marla” is a waltz, originally written in the 1930s, given a Grizzly Bear makeover. The album’s creepiest and quietest track features piano melodies that float in and out of the arrangement and may slightly scare the listener. “On a Neck, On a Spit” and “Reprise” are banjo-heavy tracks that fit perfectly together. “Colorado” is the album’s magnum opus. It is ambient and aggressive at the same time and while lyrically sparse, contains the most desperate and effective songwriting of the whole album.
“Yellow House” finds its greatest strength in its otherworldly, yet somehow cohesive feel. The whole album feels somewhat melancholy and dark, but not in a contrived or fake way at all. It is one of those albums that must be heard all the way through many times to be fully appreciated. It is difficult to determine just what the album’s main themes are. The music more effectively presents moods than well-defined messages. The songs are abstract, loose, and often feature conflicting directions. This however, is what gives the album its brilliance; the band makes these conflicting textures work together. “Yellow House” is one of the best albums of the 2000s.
Reviewer: Kris Lorenz
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Reviewer's Rating: 9.5
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Reader's Votes: 0
Added: 29-Jun-2009
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