Grizzly Bear

Since 2002 · United States

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Veckatimest (2009)

Veckatimest layers close vocal harmony and unconventional instrumentation into arrangements dense enough to reward close listening without ever losing an underlying pop sensibility. "Two Weeks" rides a warm, chiming piano figure and stacked harmonies into one of the most immediate melodies in the band's catalog, the arrangement's complexity never overwhelming the song's basic tunefulness. Daniel Rossen and Ed Droste's songwriting partnership gives the record a sense of two distinct voices in genuine conversation rather than a single vision. It remains the album most responsible for bringing Grizzly Bear's meticulous, chamber-pop-inflected indie rock to a wide audience.

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Grizzly Bear

Veckatimest · 2009

Grizzly Bear began as Ed Droste's solo bedroom-recording project before expanding into a full band, eventually built around the songwriting partnership of Droste and Daniel Rossen, whose own listening runs unusually wide — Rossen has named favorites spanning classical, jazz, blues, and Mark Hollis's post-Talk Talk solo record, which he and bandmate Chris Taylor have both cited as a formative touchstone. That range showed in the band's own arrangements, which layered close vocal harmony, unconventional instrumentation, and a studio-craft sensibility that owed as much to chamber music as to indie rock.

Veckatimest (2009) brought that intricate, harmony-rich approach to its most widely heard realization, its dense arrangements and meticulous production earning the band comparisons well beyond the indie rock scene it emerged from. The album became the record most responsible for expanding Grizzly Bear's audience, and its combination of pop songcraft and genuine compositional ambition made it a reference point for the more orchestrally minded end of 2000s indie rock.