MUSIC: The Gays of the Grizzly Bears. PLUS: Can a Scissor Sister Go Solo?

Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest
Warp Records

Only the gay press ever mentions Grizzly Bear’s gay members and no wonder—they’re Brooklyn hipster bait. Gay hipsterism usually evokes over-accessorized dandies smoking sativa and freeloading off their parents’ trust, but these hardworking gents have been busy opening for the second leg of Radiohead’s North American tour, accompanying Paul Simon at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and refining their sound in side projects like Department of Eagles. Their third album, Veckatimest, shakes off easy comparisons to The Beach Boys and Animal Collective; by comparison, Grizzly Bear’s more experimental and less sporadic, respectively. Every song starts with a low strumming instrumental accompanied by Daniel Rossen’s mesmerizing vocals. As each song gradually swells into ephemeral chorals and painstakingly arrangements evoking the melancholy wonder of the wind-swept Northeastern coast, they’re kept grounded by Christopher Bear’s commanding drumming. The opening tracks reveal the album’s central theme, the lonesomeness of love—“Southern Point” warns, “In the end / You’ll never find me now… But I’ll return to you… When you return to me.” The second song, “Two Weeks,” asks a lover if they would “maybe sometimes take it easy” despite the “routine malaise.”

The album’s second half drags—a few songs meander and end without climax. “While You Wait For The Others,” the most accessible and radio-friendly of the lot, provides a needed kick after an increasingly slow pace, saying “You could beg for forgiveness / as long as you like / or just wait out the evening… but you’ll only bleed me dry.” But even though few of the songs ever go above mid-tempo, the slower masterpieces (like “Cheerleader” and “Dory” contain gorgeous textures of swirling strings, buzzing percussion, and pearldrop plucking—the trademark flourishes that earned them their “neo-psychadelic-folk” label—that make Veckatimest worth revisiting.