Veckatimest - a swirling, mesmerising, colossus of a record.
Grizzly Bear’s third album, named after a tiny island off the coast of Massachusetts, is every thing a record should be and well worth the wait since their last outing ‘Yellow House’ back in 2006.
Veckatimest builds on the sound of its predecessor but there is a lighter, more airy feel to this album which swirls and swells throughout, lurching from calm and murmuring to driving and overpowering; shimmering and ethereal to brooding and intense; sparse and delicate to an orchestrated wall of sound. Best of all it manages several times to do all of this in the space of a single song.
Last year’s superb offering from guitarist Daniel Rossen’s other band, The Department of Eagles, gave an insight to where the band were headed and there are several tracks on Veckatimest, in particular ‘All We Ask’, which could just as easily have slotted on to the Department’s ‘In Ear Park’, featuring as they do, layers of instrumentation which build up within a song only to be stripped away again back to the barest skeleton of a song.
Where these albums differ most is the sense of light given to Veckatimest by adding Brian Wilson to the mix. This is most noticeable with the organ and harmonies on the band’s current single, ‘Two Weeks’ but it is interwoven through much of the album. That’s not to say that the band sound like the Beach Boys because they don’t at all. – there’s way too much other stuff going on here for it to sound like the Beach Boys and although the album is awash with harmonies, the vocals, now performed by every member of the band, are delivered in a less straightforward manner than the regular pop style of the Beach Boys.
In addition to the single, other stand out moments include the opening track ‘Southern Point’ which sets the tone for what follows, the Galaxie 500 sounding ‘Fine For Now’ (Christopher Bear is possibly the most controlled and subtle drummer since Galaxie 500’s Damon Krukowski) and ‘Ready, Able’ which falteringly threatens to break out into a dazzling psyche-pop whirl several times before finally doing so. In fact, it is this approach which makes Veckatimest as special as it is. It is a remarkably restrained record in that just as everything is reaching a crescendo, just as the melody really comes to the fore, it is reigned in again. The songs are slowly constructed until the sound is full and then layers are peeled away. There are short pieces in these songs which other bands would turn into an entire tune. Grizzly Bear’s genius is that they hook you in with these pieces before moving you off in another direction.
Veckatimest is a thing of beauty and a truly mesmerising album and ought to see Grizzly Bear occupy the same sort of territory in end of year polls that Fleet Foxes found themselves in last year. An instant classic.