The most interesting aspect of Grizzly Bear, at least since they gelled into a democratic band instead of Ed Droste’s project more than a decade ago, has always been the playing. That sounds like an obvious thing to say about a group that’s as prog-folk as they are chamber pop, whose lyrics are like a gorgeous looking puzzle with half the pieces missing. Each member—vocalist Droste, drummer Chris Bear, plus Daniel Rossen and Chris Taylor on vocals, guitars, and a bevy of other instruments—is an exceptionally skilled musician. Culminating with the dark intricacies of 2012’s Shields, Grizzly Bear’s evolution has seen them move from the looser, moodier side of folk-rock, to records defined by their more latticework approach to vocals and instrumentation—modern “headphone listening” music.
With their first new album in five years, Painted Ruins, Grizzly Bear offer another record with many gorgeous layers to parse. But this band also knows the pitfalls of making music that continually chooses the scenic route: “Given that our albums aren’t necessarily like, you listen to it once and you love it, I always want to give an album at least five listens,” Droste recently told Pitchfork. “Because it unfolds upon you. You keep discovering things.” There’s a touch of sensory overload to the instrumentation, and individual melodies don’t quite get their hooks into your brain. For some, the moving target of Grizzly Bear compositions is part of the fun, an endless string of unexpected decisions. For others, it will make for aggressively tasteful and well-produced music that can fall flat, like a smile you give to a co-worker in passing.
Consider this: Though Painted Ruins is Grizzly Bear’s most synth-heavy and beat-driven album to date (short of the Horn of Plenty remix collection), there’s nothing here that approaches the pluck of “Two Weeks,” one of the catchiest hits of ’00s indie rock. “Mourning Sound” certainly aims for a similar strain of driving pop power and comes as close to it as the album gets, with new wave synths and a steady beat. But for once, perhaps what sticks with you most is the lyrical imagery, with Rossen cooing about city street noise.
Some bands use their sprawling instrumentation to work up to anthemic choruses (think early Fleet Foxes), but that has never really been Grizzly Bear’s approach. Their arrangements are weighty and crumpled, creating songs that aren’t open roads so much as a series of switchbacks. When their opaque lyricism vibrates on the same frequency as their performances, the story of the song tends to come into soft focus. (I couldn’t tell you what Yellow House’s “On a Neck, On a Spit”—one of Grizzly Bear’s great unwieldy runaways—is specifically saying, but I do have a clear picture of the contented isolation it’s trying to convey.) “Neighbors,” one of Painted Ruins’ singles, is an exhilarating drive through the Swiss Alps. As the guitar comes barreling around a tight bend and the beats hit the gas, it creates this sense that someone’s gaining ground behind you. The scene is apt, as Droste sings about appreciating some distance from a partner while being pulled closer to them.
Though part of Grizzly Bear’s charm lies in the odd textures, tunings, and tempo shifts, their best songs don’t get lost in the details or the unconventional structures. At their best, they reel in and reel out martial indie rock on “Cut-out”; they cohere into something grand on “Losing All Sense,” a five-minute cut that teeters between a jaunty doo-wop and a half-time synth-psych reverie. The shape of that song approximates the gear-shifting dissociation Droste sings of, finally sounding a little more alive in his voice (Rossen swoops in nicely, too). It’s only occasionally when songs lose the big picture, like on”Systole,” that you’re wondering why you took the long way in the first place, as the song plods along without destination.
A colleague once referred to Grizzly Bear as “widescreen sound” because it’s difficult not to think of them in cinematic terms. They are purveyors of mood, evokers of their own time and place. It’s like some of these prestige television shows, with their slate-blue filters, expensive set pieces, and crisp dialogue. Such series are supremely well constructed, made by creators of great skill and taste, but there’s something lacking in the heart department, something a bit hollow. Painted Ruins, cursorily an album about battling demons, can feel a little like prestige music. But there’s this moment at the end—a spot where Grizzly Bear records routinely reach their heights—that reminds listeners that tangible realism can be a necessary counterpoint to the quartet’s impressionism. Atop a briny wave of guitar distortion, Droste offers up a closing shot you can still picture hours later when he calmly and clearly repeats a few times, “Since I was a young boy, it was always there/Inside me growing, none of it seems fair/I’ve come to accept it, let it take the stage/And leave me helpless, watching far away.” Suddenly the music is close to you, as Painted Ruins finally zooms in on an emotion, a beautifully composed moment that captures the haze of what came before.
