I'm not going to be the first one to say this. In fact, what I'm going to say is nothing revolutionary. It's practically pedestrian, but I'm going to say it anyway. You need the new Grizzly Bear CD, Veckatimest. Really. You need it.
I resisted Grizzly Bear for forever. I'm a resister. It's part of what I do. Take Facebook, for example. I don't have an account. I'm the girl at the concert who will not clap or wave her hands or shout just because some people on stage tell me to; they have to make me want to. I can be a bit of a contrarian. It is childish, yes, and it has made me miss out on good stuff. Then again, I'm never the girl asking herself why she wasted those hours reading that crappy book or seeing that crappy movie that had all the hype. Sadly, though, the second everyone starts buzzing about something is the second I'm going to start pretending it doesn't exist. That happened with Grizzly Bear. Back when Yellow House came out, it was buzz, buzz, buzz, and I ignored it.
What made me decide to give Grizzly Bear a serious try was NPR. Yeah, NPR. I love that stuff. I've got the All Songs Considered podcast, among others, and I check out it every once in a while. I tend to store up a lot of them and then knock out 3 or 4 episodes in a Saturday afternoon. Well, on a semi-recent broadcast, which I've since deleted so don't ask me which one, they played a live Grizzly Bear track recorded at SXSW. It was stunningly gorgeous. I may even have cried a little. After that, I resolved to download the entire album from iTunes (because I only rock the legal stuff or what my friends give me from their own collections) once it became available. Unfortunately, my iTunes was acting up and wouldn't let me download anything until just last week, so I didn't get the album till then despite it's being out for nearly a month.
No exaggeration, I have listened to it multiple times everyday since I got it. I am madly in love with this CD, the entire thing. I keep finding new favorite tracks. It is simply gorgeous. Now, I'm not a music critic; I just know what I like. I cannot talk about chord progressions or production values, but I can say that this album gets inside of you. I wake up hearing it in my brain. The lyrics are simple and bare, often seeming to be sketches of lyrics more than fully formed stories or even ideas, but the way the lyrics are sung imbues them with meanings that the words on the page don't have all by themselves.
The point is that I'm having an intense and madly passionate love affair with this CD, but since it is a CD, I don't mind sharing the object of my love with anyone and everyone. If you are looking to buy just one new CD, get this one. As was the case with Arcade Fire, my stubbornness nearly caused me to miss the bandwagon on one of those too rare occasions where it is actually worth jumping on.
No comments:
Post a Comment