Veckatimest

The opening track, Southern Point, is astounding. Five minutes of extraordinarily intricate ensemble playing, full of shifting rhythmic relationships, interlocking instrumental figures and passages that seem to develop almost as separate movements within a larger composition. Yet there’s nothing remotely laboured about it. The musicians negotiate these changes with such intuitive understanding that the complexity never announces itself as an achievement. Instead, the music shimmers. At its busiest, there’s something almost magical about the way the individual parts combine, as though the sheer quantity of musical activity has somehow produced light rather than weight. I was captivated, but also slightly apprehensive. If the whole album was going to operate at this level of density, I wondered whether admiration might eventually give way to exhaustion. There was certainly no questioning the musicianship, but fifty minutes of such sustained complexity could become intimidating. Then Two Weeks arrived and demonstrated just how misplaced that concern was. Here’s a gorgeous, light baroque pop confection, built around a wonderfully insistent staccato piano figure, with cascading backing vocals, glorious harmonies and some exceptional drumming from Christopher Bear. The build into the chorus is beautifully controlled, but it’s the moments when the arrangement withdraws that are particularly impressive. The drop into the middle eight is fantastic, and the final chorus briefly strips itself back before blossoming again. These are sophisticated compositional decisions, yet the result is effortlessly pleasurable pop music. Grizzly Bear can be enormously elaborate without sacrificing the simple joy of a beautifully constructed song. That contrast between the first two tracks began to reveal what makes this album so distinctive. I could hear something of Radiohead’s extraordinary ensemble intelligence, particularly the collective rhythmic fluency of In Rainbows, combined with Brian Wilson’s sensibility for melody and vocal harmony. But neither comparison entirely explains the music. Radiohead often employ rhythmic uncertainty to create tension, while Wilson’s elaborate arrangements can aspire towards an almost overwhelming emotional grandeur. Grizzly Bear seem to possess elements of both approaches while pursuing something rather different: a music of intimacy, wonder, occasional unease and, above all, extraordinary acoustic space. The amount of space on All We Ask is immense. Its introduction feels almost like a miniature overture, establishing a musical world before the song properly begins. Then individual instrumental gestures emerge, surrounded by great expanses of air. Yet the effect is absolutely intimate. The musicians aren’t using spaciousness to establish distance from the listener; they’re allowing us closer to the individual sounds. The repeated closing line, “I can’t get out of what I’m into with you”, lodges in the memory with remarkable persistence. It’s such a simple phrase, but the emotional implications are less straightforward. Devotion, entanglement, affection and resignation might all be present. The arrangement allows the ambiguity to remain. Three tracks in, and I was beginning to understand that Grizzly Bear are doing something much more interesting than writing elaborate indie songs. Their music is anything but obvious, but it’s enticingly listenable. Unusual structures, unexpected harmonic relationships and rhythmic irregularities become sources of pleasure rather than obstacles to comprehension. The compositions don’t seem particularly interested in satisfying conventional expectations, but wherever they lead, the destination feels musically persuasive. Fine for Now makes this even clearer. Christopher Bear’s bass drum is extraordinary, soft and rounded, almost like a pillow. It gives the music weight without heaviness. There’s a beautiful delicacy to the way the drums sit beneath the increasingly complex arrangement, providing support without insisting upon rhythmic authority. The vocal harmonies are equally remarkable, particularly the band’s understanding of how to employ dissonance. Closely spaced voices rub against one another, producing exquisite tensions that don’t necessarily require immediate resolution. Even the metre seems difficult to grasp with any confidence, as instrumental accents and vocal phrases complicate the underlying pulse. And yet the song never sounds academic. That’s becoming one of the album’s great achievements. These musicians are exceptionally clever, but there is remarkably little evidence of them wanting to demonstrate how clever they are. By Cheerleader, I was falling in love with the record. The angular, skeletal opening is an absolute joy, its little instrumental gestures so carefully placed that the gaps between them become part of the arrangement. Then the Brooklyn Youth Chorus enters, and something extraordinary happens. The additional voices don’t transform the music into a conventional choral arrangement. They’re woven into the existing texture, placed at such an apparent distance that they become another element in the acoustic landscape. The original instrumental skeleton remains perfectly visible. The shimmering vibrato guitars in the middle eight are beautiful, too. There’s something especially satisfying about the way the song can acquire such richness without losing any of its original definition. The arrangement doesn’t simply become bigger; it becomes deeper. This is where I began to struggle with the description baroque pop. It undoubtedly fits, but it also carries expectations that don’t quite correspond to what I’m hearing. Baroque pop generally suggests richness through ornamentation and density: increasingly elaborate instrumental combinations, orchestral gestures, lavish harmonies and an accumulation of musical detail. Grizzly Bear possess all the requisite sophistication, but they seem just as interested in what happens when the instruments stop playing, or when they leave enough distance between their contributions for the individual sounds to establish themselves. It’s not simply that the album contains air. It’s that the air has an audible physical character. In Dory, the ambient reverberation is extraordinary. The ghostly vocal textures seem to hover at uncertain distances, while the individual instruments occupy distinct positions within a much larger acoustic environment. This is quite unlike the great enveloping reverb swamp I associate with My Morning Jacket, where sounds can merge into a single reverberant mass. Here, each instrument retains its identity. The reverberation gives it somewhere to exist. I initially thought of this as baroque pop with the windows open, but that isn’t right at all. There’s nothing especially outdoors about it. Quite the opposite. You can almost hear the sounds bouncing off walls and ceilings, the reflections establishing the dimensions of the room. The music feels enclosed within an acoustic environment whose boundaries are discernible, even when the apparent space becomes enormous. This is chamber pop in a more literal architectural sense than the genre usually implies. The chamber itself becomes part of the composition. And it’s not simply a matter of clever production. The instrumental arrangements create their own space through the placement of notes, the separation of registers, the use of silence and the carefully judged relationships between competing musical voices. An instrument can contribute only a few notes and still establish a distinctive presence within the whole. The production then gives that presence an apparent physical location. There’s an important difference between complexity and congestion. Grizzly Bear seem to understand it instinctively. As the album progresses, another quality becomes increasingly apparent. The songs feel like slightly skewed folk tales. There’s something familiar about their melodic contours, acoustic instrumentation and impressionistic lyrics, but the musical world never quite behaves according to ordinary expectations. The stories seem to come from somewhere recognisable, while their underlying logic belongs to a different place. Ready, Able has a gently rocking, triple-metre feel, accompanied by a faintly creepy shimmer. The lyrical suggestions of establishing domesticity sit intriguingly against an arrangement that seems anything but settled. There’s a tension between the apparent desire for a stable, familiar world and the unsettling quality of the music. It doesn’t necessarily contradict the lyrical sentiment, but it complicates it. Home might represent reassurance, entanglement, uncertainty, or some combination of all three. About Face develops through the gradual accretion of instrumental detail, including a wonderfully peculiar little sound resembling a steam organ. Its rhythms and textures are carefully constructed, yet the ensemble playing feels remarkably fluid. By this point, I was beginning to think of the music as a kind of careful jazz. Not because it necessarily employs much jazz vocabulary or improvisation, but because of the independence of the instrumental voices and the exceptional understanding between the players. The individual parts seem capable of following their own trajectories while remaining completely alert to one another. The sophistication is collective rather than competitive. Hold Still might be the purest demonstration of the band’s restraint. The guitars possess a wonderfully delicate saturated bloom, their amplified sound developing a soft halo of harmonics without becoming aggressive or overbearing. Even distortion is being used to create warmth and colour rather than force. The arrangement seems to contain precisely as much music as it needs, and not a note more. Listening to it, I thought that Brian, my music-loving friend, needed to find somewhere quiet, put on this album and simply wander around inside it. That image increasingly seemed to capture the nature of the listening experience. This isn’t background music, but neither does it demand an exhausting degree of concentration. Instead, it invites the listener to explore. You can follow a guitar line, become distracted by the decay of a note, discover a barely perceptible vocal harmony somewhere in the distance, or notice how the drums briefly alter the apparent weight of the arrangement. There’s enough separation between the components for attention to move freely among them. While You Wait for the Others returns to the angular, skeletal approach, introducing little stuttering rhythmic interruptions that make the eventual cohesion of the chorus all the more magnificent. Once again, Grizzly Bear demonstrate their understanding of subtraction. They know that the impact of a musical arrival can be enormously increased by briefly withholding what the listener expects. The chorus doesn’t simply become fuller; it feels like a group of musicians finding their way back into alignment after momentarily pulling in different directions. The resulting beauty is inseparable from the preceding disruption. By I Live With You, the record begins to move somewhere more peculiar. Another miniature overture, apparently constructed around five-beat phrasing, introduces a collection of instrumental textures that seem to combine according to an almost dreamlike logic. The individual sounds are familiar enough, but their relationships are profoundly strange. It reminded me of Oliver Postgate and, particularly, the extraordinary musical world created around his programmes by Vernon Elliott. There’s a found-object quality to the instrumentation, as though someone had discovered a box of curious old instruments, musical toys and forgotten sound-making devices, then worked out how to make them function as an ensemble. But the comparison only goes so far, and the difference is important. Postgate’s worlds, however peculiar, tend to possess an underlying warmth and reassurance. Their homemade textures are fundamentally endearing. Grizzly Bear employ similarly unexpected combinations of sound, but the emotional result is quite different. There’s a curious alienation. The instruments seem to belong together musically without necessarily belonging together emotionally. The textures suggest familiarity while their combinations produce something strangely remote. It’s almost the musical equivalent of dreaming about an ordinary room in which the furniture has been rearranged in some impossible manner. Everything remains recognisable, yet nothing quite feels right. This is where the album’s impressionistic lyrics become especially effective. They seldom insist upon a single narrative interpretation, and the music often supplies an emotional ambiguity that the words themselves leave unresolved. Domesticity can sound unsettling. Intimacy can coexist with estrangement. Beauty doesn’t necessarily imply reassurance. The vocal performances are central to this. I haven’t distinguished confidently between Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen throughout the album, so I won’t pretend to assign particular qualities to one or the other. What I can say is that the singing possesses a remarkable combination of mannerism and vulnerability, frequently expressed through a delicate, beautiful high register. There’s something almost paradoxical about these voices. They can sound carefully controlled, even guarded, while remaining intensely exposed. Their fragility is unmistakably human, but the arrangements occasionally place them within environments that seem almost disembodied. At times the voices become additional instruments, contributing harmonic colour and texture without entirely surrendering their emotional identity. The ending of Foreground is extraordinary. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus returns, but here the voices become spectral, haunting presences. They seem to recede into the reverberant space until their physical origins are almost impossible to imagine. It’s a beautiful conclusion, although not one that necessarily offers comfort or conventional resolution. And perhaps that’s appropriate. The record has spent much of its duration finding beauty in ambiguity, intimacy in spaciousness and extraordinary musical coherence in the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated materials. It would almost be a betrayal of its character to resolve all those tensions neatly at the end. What impresses me most about Veckatimest is the complete absence of any need to advertise its own sophistication. The musicianship is astonishing, the harmonic writing exceptionally accomplished, and the arrangements frequently unlike anything one might reasonably expect from an indie-rock band. Yet the music never seems determined to prove anything. Its complexity is not the subject of the performance. It’s the means through which the band creates atmosphere, intimacy, wonder and occasional unease. There’s also something immensely satisfying about its understanding of restraint. Restraint doesn’t mean a shortage of musical ideas, nor does it necessarily imply minimalism. Here, it means knowing precisely how much space every musical idea requires, how much weight it should carry, how long it should remain, and what happens to the rest of the arrangement when it disappears. The result is music that can be extravagantly elaborate while sounding almost weightless. Sounds bloom, shimmer and decay. Voices drift into and out of focus. Rhythmic relationships complicate themselves without interrupting the natural movement of the songs. The musicians seem completely at ease with a musical language that is often anything but straightforward. And through it all, there are melodies, moments of tremendous tenderness, irresistible choruses and beautifully judged changes in emotional temperature. The album never forgets that the purpose of all this extraordinary construction is to make something worth hearing. I began by being astonished by Southern Point, and slightly concerned that its density might prove too much over the length of the record. Two Weeks showed me that sophistication could be light, buoyant and immediately accessible. All We Ask revealed the intimacy made possible by enormous amounts of space. Cheerleader was where admiration became outright affection. The later tracks drew me into a stranger, more dreamlike musical world, where the beauty remained constant but the emotional implications became less reassuring. By the end, I was completely won over. There are records that impress by the sheer quantity of their ideas, and others that impress through the discipline with which those ideas are organised. Veckatimest manages both, but its particular achievement lies in something less easily defined: the ability to make intricate, meticulously constructed music feel alive, intuitive and full of air. It’s an album I want to return to, not necessarily to understand it better, but simply to spend more time inhabiting its extraordinary acoustic world. There are so many places within it that I haven’t finished exploring.

I love me some Grizzly Bear. Probably one of the better offerings as the mid 2000's "indie" boom was getting ready to wind down. The vocal composition alone is fantastic. The general musicianship and composition is very tight. Grizzy Bear excels as the sum of its parts and creates somethign interesting and unique. It is important to note that this particular album enters an indie pool containing many (too many) bands that were influenced by GB's earlier work, ironically making in hit a little lighter at that time.

Really vibed with this, grew on me throughout my multiple listens. Distant cousin of Arcade Fire, in a good way.

Got a soft spot for this one! It’s nice and lush

A good listen i would say. Some amazing instrumentals. Fav track:”Two weeks”

The production on this is really good, and yet I found myself asking “how much longer” for a lot of these tracks

Album No. 0227 on my list. "Veckatimest" is such a cool, unique name for a music album; yet, I had never heard of the album or the band Grizzly Bear ever before. The combination of the year this album was released in, its cover and both its name and the name of the band pointed into one direction: indie rock. And what can I say, if this ain't an indie album, none is. I find it difficult to properly rate this album, though. I have a soft spot for late 00s/early 10s indie music, but this album almost feels like a genre parody. It really sounds exactly like you'd expect an indie rock album from 2009 to sound, and not always in a good way. By the second half, I'm afraid things got a little repetitive. On the other hand, I found the music oddly comforting and even, you know, hygge... besides, it is incredibly well-produced. A good album to play on vinyl on your overpriced hifi setup to impress your friends (and being a little slop myself, that's actually a compliment!) That being said, it might just be the case that this is an album that rather needs to grow on you, so maybe my rating may increase in the future. For now, I'll add "Southern Point", "Two Weeks", and "Cheerleader" to my playlist. 3/5 stars.

Låtarna är typ lite för storslagna för min smak? Andra låten har man ju hört på TikTok. Men ett stabilt millenial optimism album liksom, som Fleet Foxes fast lite storslagnare som sagt.

My only problem with this album is "All We Ask" automatically comes on when I connect my phone to the car

I am indie trash

Fizzled by the end

I enjoyed this. Mellow, orchestral, dreamy, Fleet Foxes-y. Heard it before? ❌ Listen again? ✅ Rating out of ten? 8️⃣

A great one.

A beautiful, slightly dull album that sounds like water being purified.

I’m glad I listened and actually recognized a couple of the songs. Seems pretty average of the Indy music of the time. While Okay, I probably won’t seek it out again.

9/10

Not bad. Perfect vocal.

I haven't had enough time to get into this as I would've liked as I'm away, but I really enjoyed what I heard. One particular moment strikes out though, when I managed to get a rare five minutes to myself, listening to this album whilst riding a bike though a sunlit forest, and everything flowed and everything synced, and for a month I was in my own wee music video. Excellent.

Grizzly Bear is proof that folk is still alive. Veckatimest comes out to a strong start and has a decent finish, but is a bit droopy and dull through the middle. The musicianship is top notch and the album is professionally put together so I’ll check out some of their other songs. (2.65*s) Who knew folk music was still alive?

A nicely put together soft indie-rock album. Sounds like some open room recording was utilized. The songs have depth with back-up vocals and instruments flying in from all over. It's not your typical indie album and falls in the same vein as the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions. I liked it on a rainy day. Sounds sad and happy at the same time which is tough to pull off. "Two Weeks" and "Foreground" peaked my interest most. Surprised I had never heard of the band before. 2.71 stars for a mellow trip out to Cape Cod and Veckatimest Island. May have to drive through it next trip to MA (it's very small).

Another decent indie rock album from the list. I'd heard of Grizzly Bear before and even had Two Weeks saved previously but wasn't familiar with Veckatimest or anything else by them. They have enough of a different sound to separate them a bit from the pack of other 2010's indie acts that I'd put into this realm. Pretty good album, enjoyed pretty much all the songs but nothing amazing. I feel like I may have run into these guys at a music festival on one of the smaller stages a decade ago and wouldn't have realized it. Not sure if they would ever be able to climb their way up to the top of the poster as their sound is just strange enough that I don't see them breaking through for mainstream/headlining success. 3.05 stars

Interesting album. Was very successful and highly praised as I remember back in the day.

🫤

I didn’t realise it at the time, but the late 00s/early 10s stomp clap era is as easy to place in time as grunge or britpop. As with britpop, the term is used sneeringly today, whereas like grunge, it’s a broad church with a congregation including some very good bands. Grizzly Bear are amongst the better and the lead single from this album, Two Weeks, is a great tune. I found the rest of the album less interesting, although it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a grower

Atmospheric, reminded me of Radiohead. Liked overall. 3.5

6.0/10

Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear is almost the definition of average indie music for me. I didn't hate it, the time passed by easily enough, and there were some pleasant moments, but nothing really grabbed me or made me think, wow, this is brilliant! I don't think 2009 was a particularly great period for music, and I do wonder whether that helped this album find its way onto the list. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but equally, I struggle to understand what makes it so special. It's all very gentle, melodic and nicely put together, but much of it just drifts along without leaving much of an impression. That said, I did give it a second listen, and I have to admit I enjoyed it more the second time around. Songs like "Fine for Now" started to grow on me, and I picked up on some of the melodies and arrangements that must have passed me by the first time. There's clearly some good musicianship here, and the layered harmonies are lovely in places. "Southern Point" and "Two Weeks" are both good songs, full of those delicate melodies and slightly twee indie sounds. I can imagine the hipsters absolutely loving this album back in 2009! Unfortunately, for me, there just aren't enough moments that really stand out. Ultimately, Veckatimest is a pleasant enough listen, and it certainly improved with a second play. However, pleasant doesn't necessarily mean memorable. It's beautifully produced and has some interesting moments, but too much of it feels rather dull and forgettable. I'm glad I gave it another chance, but I can't imagine rushing back to it. Favourite tracks: "Southern Point" and "Two Weeks" are both good tunes, if a little twee. "Fine for Now" also grew on me after a second listen. Least favourite track: Nothing is particularly awful, but there's an awful lot of dull music on here. Too many songs just pass by without leaving much of an impression. Album artwork: I really like this cover. The colours work beautifully together, and it's probably one of the most memorable things about the album.

I've never heard of Grizzly Bear (that I know of) so this will be brand new to me. Hoping it isn't a stomp, clap, hey! band given that it's indie folk from 2009.... Well stomp, clap, hey! it's not. So that's good. I can't really decide what to make of it after about 3 or 4 songs. I love the drum sound, just the right amount of thickness while being clear and articulate still. The recording and production seem to have been great on this record, jury is still out on whether or not I actually like the music. There are a lot of vocal overdubs which gets a bit wearing. It's a decent album but it is a little long for what it is. I don't know that I would choose to listen to this again or really have any interest in exploring more from them. But I might one day. 3.25/5

I've heard this several times and enjoy it. Really need to be in the right mood to listen for some reason. It's seems like it should be accessible, but is often a somewhat challenging listen and really takes its time. Rounding up today. 3.5/5.

This was very nice.

I maybe heard the one song before this. I liked it, nice mix of indie rock sounds here.

The new additions to these books really demonstrate how important it is for the albums to stand the test of time. This isn’t bad as such, it is just entirely unremarkable and I really don’t think it needs to be heard before I die. Very not special.

Two Weeks

Surprisingly pleasant!

This is a gem in this list! Worth listening!

Slow and boring. Not super annoying but not for me.

3.5 down

I'm not sure what to make of this. I didn't listen to all of it. Does that mean I won't die?

Didn't really enjoy this at all. Meandering and boring.

Nice chord progressions on a few songs but his voice sounded really moany and the music didn't go anywhere interesting. 3/5

I thought this was a coherent listen, and my lack of playlisting does not reflect a lack of enjoyment, just a volume of tracks that are better heard in context than out

This has good elements, but I just don't feel super into it. Missing that je ne sais quoi.

Nice

didn't really vibe with this one. i didn't actively dislike any of the songs but a lot of them kinda just washed over me. i might need to listen to it again sometime and see if i get it any more then i liked the general sound of the album, and i found the production pretty fun (in that there's a lot of quirks that sound like they were just added cause 'why not?'), but i just ended up zoning out by the end of some of the songs because i didn't particularly like what was happening. definitely a couple songs i really liked tho favourite songs: foreground, two weeks, fine for now least favourite song: all we ask

Dreamy alt rock

With a artist name as Grizzy Bear and listed as a rock act - WOW was this a whole heap of boring mundane background music

Discordant and polyrhythms? Nah, too cool for me by miles A touch of recentism here maybe?

Maso

Meh.

Album 1002!! So somehow after listening to what I thought were all the albums I was supposed to listen to before departing this mortal coil, it would seem that 1001 were not enough to fill a life and another 88 have been found. So the daily enjoyment or otherwise of listening to an album continues. This one unfortunately comes under the ‘otherwise’ category. Not a band I’d previously heard of so it was all new. I’d say it was inoffensive to its own detriment. Despite the colourful album cover the musical content is decidedly beige and forgettable. 2/5 30/9/26

Decent enough without breaking through any walls. A band that clearly want to be something but keep finding themselves been others that have been before, therefore sounding like a generic indie rock band. Some decent ideas that unfortunately never felt unique to me. Best track- the very Radiohead sounding ‘foreground’ just missing out to the very Arcade Fire sounding ‘I live with you. Worst track- The very generic sounding ‘ready able’ 4.5/10

Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest Like a bedroom project that should have stayed there. A collage of bits and pieces of their, no doubt, extensive collection of 'vinyls'. Admirably ambitious at times, but never scales any heights...or plumbs and interesting depths. Gonna go listen to some Grandaddy, Palace Brothers, Pavement and Kings of Convenience to wash this away from my lobes. Best Track - the Arcade Fire-ish I Live With You Worst Track - Southern Point 4/10

Kind of cool…all sorts of pop and Americana sounds.

Some good tracks, but kind of inconsistent. Not much cohesion. Still liked it overall.

Quality jazzy interesting indie vibes. Downside is it's peak upper class musician family vibe.

Outstanding!!!

Not really my cup of tea for some reason.

I don't know. I can see that the album is fairly recent and it's overall pretty chill, but I don't know if I am a fan of how chill it is. If you want this to be a very lowkey background, that's fine, but actively listening to this - it's just a bit meh. I think that the best use case for this album would just be as chill background music in a movie scene where the main characters are high and are just chilling. Anyway, it's overall alright but not super amazing.

A perfectly amiable folk pop record that sums up how it feels to be on an uninhabited island of the coast of Massachusetts. I imagine. Oddly enough, the track I enjoyed the most was the bonus piano only demo version of “All I Ask” on the end.

Stephen Stills collides with 2000s Indie Music, and not in a good way.

i love me some feel good inc esk uplifting slighly quriky indie pop/rock projects like these. they just SMELL like bubblegum 2010s serotonin. i knew this band's most famous song from a sample actually (g-eazy) that also tracks back to happy simpler days. maybe it is a bit long tho

The 2010s might have been the worst time in indie with a few exceptions. This is unfortunately nor one of them.

Two Weeks is a right jam. The rest of it was a pretty decent listen too.

I don’t know what I think about this. It’s good, but only in smaller doses

There are a lot of bands that started hitting in the mid-aughts I lump together. Postal Service, The National, War on Drugs . They range in quality and scope, but I vaguely think of them as MAB bands, and it’s a bit inside baseball to understand that description until the movie comes out about all that. Grizzly Bear is one of these bands. And I can’t be more clear about this: these bands range from terrible to awesome, like any bunch of generalized bands from a particular period of time. So, Grizzly Bear is middling-good. I think this album was actually quite pretty for the most part, if a tad overstaying it’s welcome by the end.

In terms of album quality, circa 2010 really is a swirling blackhole of dogshit. That being said, this exceeded my pathetic expectations & I gave Coldplay three-stars so why not?

You know what, it’s a chill album I’m fine with being on in the background. Saved.

This album was practically a soundtrack to a certain part of my life. Super nostalgic

ive def spent the last like 10 years of my life making fun of these guys and not listening to their albums and I guess it wasnt as bad as i remembered...

This just didn’t really get through. Pleasant enough but dare I say a bit bland.

Landfill indie, well executed

An album that flattered to please. I liked it the first time through but then pretty bored on the second

A coquettish album. Lures you in with a flash of interesting melody or Wilson-esque harmony. Then dashes your hopes as it switches rhythm or key. Ultimately, it's used me for it's own ends and cast me to one side without so much as a sideways glance. Not a basis for a long-term relationship. A slightly resentful 2*.

Good

Very pretty and atmospheric but didn’t have a lot of moments that distinctly stood out to me. I was surprised by how much of an outlier “Two Weeks” felt in the context of the rest of the album. Fav tracks: Two Weeks; Southern Point

vinyl day!! a very beautiful album

no me parece bueno pero he escuchado peores cosas

Okay album. I like the style of music but nothing too interesting and some slightly boring tracks. Well put together record still

I don’t get why these random indie rock albums get on the list and more influential stuff like tame impala get skipped ? This was decently fun, lowkey liked the folk rock elements more then the indie stuff in this

My favourite part of the album is the artist description on the list, where it describes how a Grizzly Bear is a brown bear. My enjoyment of the album ends there; this album sounds nothing like a Grizzly Bear. It's boring and doesn't go anywhere (similar to a lot of albums in this era). If this sounded more like a Grizzly Bear, I would enjoy it more!

Not bad, I like Grizzly Bear, even went to see them play at the House of Blues in Houston.

It was good.

First 2 songs were okay, skipped through the rest. Not for me.

Two Weeks is a gorgeous song but I never got the love for this album. It's a boring, tedious experience and most of the songs are forgettable

Not for me. 1/5

This is an absolutely NOT for me. I don’t want to hear this group ever again please.

Amazed that I never heard of this band before, and I am very happy to have listened to this album. The indierockish sounds combined with the high vocals of the lead singer sometimes remind me of other bands as The Shins and DeWolff, but then it surprises with some more 'weird' elements. I even get a bit of an Animal Collective feeling from 'I Live With You'.

Like a posh Beach Boys. It's alright, but I'm not engaged.

Two weeks...OH that is where THAT song comes from. Except for a couple of songs, I found this album somewhat insipid. The weaker songs far outweigh the good songs. All we ask and fireground are the two standout songs. borderline 3 stars

Winding, meandering, navel gazing. Some of it less offensive than the rest, but a couple of tracks required skipping before they drove me to scream in annoyance.

What a great record, experimental lo-fi indie neo-folk jazz dream pop. It is hard to pin a genre too. I know it is slow in parts, maybe a tad depressing but it sounds so good with the harmonies and weird changes. I own it and love it

I err appreciate the aesthetics they're going for, but save for the singles "Two Weeks" and "While You Wait For the Others", the album is largely forgettable.

IMHO: Fleet Foxes + Midlake + a dab of creativity = Grizzly Bear. It was a refreshing album to listen to. I need to check out more from them I think. Favourites: Two Weeks, Southern Point and About Face

forgettable

A short but enjoyable listen. A relaxing audio with some smooth songs.

i realy really liked it cos i also dig the apocalyptic vibe and fhis album fit itnso goodddddd

This is all about the day I listened to it. This was somber, floating on a cloud of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, anti-physcotics where I didn't really feel anything but somber and melancholy. If it was a different day different time this likely would have hit strong but today it was just there. They were talented and trying to put together something that made me feel this way, so I want to say props for that. It didn't feel forced and yet sucked all of the feeling out of my body. But today I needed something to make me feel something more than there.

I really like the song Two Weeks, so I was hopeful for this album. Unfortunately the rest really didn't measure up. Not sure what genre this even is, and it just felt like the songs didn't go anywhere. They have some interesting sounds, but there's almost a pretentiousness to it that overrides making solidly good music.

2010s folk rock. Kind of mid.

The beginning of every single song had a lot of promise. But then, weirdly, each song took a different turn and was not as satisfying as I hoped. This album was a colossal cock tease.