4/5
If the little-known genre of steam-punk were as cool as I want it to be ‘mdash; not the mediocre goth sect it is in real Wikipedia life ‘mdash; if steam-punk’s telescopes, time machines and open-gear compasses were rubbed with varnish and made to glint, the whole scene would belong only to Grizzly Bear.
It’s painful to group the Brooklyn quartet with the lately overcrowded indie-rock circle of church-choir atmospheraholics like Fleet Foxes, My Morning Jacket and Bon Iver ‘mdash; though they do have plenty of that going on. But where Daniel Rossen’s lead vocals may at first seem to reverberate like the rest, they are in fact cupped and drop-shadowed in the sliver of a bandmate’s own rising solo. Discipline and restraint lend an inner metal-weight to the band’s antique varnish, setting them apart from nervous classmates who do gypsy impressions whenever things get slow.
All slowness aside, Grizzly Bear have a new nonproblem with likeability. The more nuanced and intricate they grow as musicians, the more accessible the sum of their parts. If you’re willing to re-imagine your wildest dreams at their excruciating pace, there’s no avoiding an addiction to the sparser heartbeat of a perfect machine ‘mdash; blooping and churning without a single unintentional groan of wear. The men behind the machine, of course, are blistering their fingers with tiny gears to keep the beat square and punky while preserving the steam in the crannies of the stained-glass Mother Mary above.
Fortunately, Veckatimest gets its most painfully gorgeous moments over with early on. Second-track single ‘Two Weeks’ enters coyly on Devotchka piano toes, one grumpy bass striking a beat that never warms, bruising a boardroom finger-tap that zips across a choice chunk of keyboard to lend the song its entire sense of orbit. Drizzle on the merciless altar-boy peels of Rossen, and the grounded bass and pebbly drums are lifted to the slightest of hovers ‘mdash; one we’d rather break than bear its prettiness.
The majority of Veckatimest’s remainder is stocked with awkward, seemingly free-jazz moments that plod to a formula we have no chance of pinning, every other track an ‘I’ve Just Seen a Face’ to keep us from suffocating on the ‘Yesterday’s.
That compositions so embellished in cymbal, so hung in light and tinsel, and with a soul to their swirl that rivals Shuggie Otis, can still feel so first-man essential ‘mdash; a single drop of African sweat ‘mdash; is a barely-there fruit of the greatest labor.
Grizzly Bear will perform live in Los Angeles at the Wiltern on June 19.