5/29, Town Hall: Grizzly Bear, Here We Go Magic

Managed to score some last-minute terrific seats off StubHub, somehow for a price below box office. If I said I was a die hard Grizzly Bear fan, I'd be lying, so I won't say that. I tried out Yellow House a few years back and wasn't super-impressed. But I acknowledge that they are Exhibit A of bands whose albums require no fewer than five thousand listens to come around to them. (I didn't dig TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain for the first two years I owned it, and then... whabam! It hit me really hard.) So when GB's new record, Veckatimest, became the recipient of more music-circle praise than In Rainbows, I naturally had to try it out. And I think it's phenomenal. But more on that later.

Here We Go Magic was the lone opener. They were decent, and they had some nice, frenetic piano-bouncin' riffs. Their vocalist didn't add much, and the songs mostly just meandered around without ever doing much, but I found them moderately enjoyable. I did manage to amass a massive crush on their keyboardist/backup singer in the 33 minutes they were on stage, and I was and remain a big fan of "Fangela," which I suppose could accurately be dubbed their hit.

The Brooklyn foursome Grizzly Bear swarmed the stage next, to much applause. (Brooklyn Vegan has the pictures, albeit from the previous night's show.) They've amassed quite a following, although I'm sure a Pitchfork 9.0 and a Metacritic 88 don't exactly make it difficult for them to do so. Trying to describe Grizzly Bear, as The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones attempted to do earlier this month, is mostly an act in futility; Fleet Foxes, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and Nick Drake all come to mind, but only to a small extent. Grizzly Bear is some weird amalgam of jazzy percussion, Mamas and the Papas-style vocal harmonizing, funereal church music, and catchy, singalongable pop sequences. Nothing about them evokes specific Beatles songs per se, but it does sound as though Ed Droste listened to Abbey Road a ton.

The bottom line, however, is this: These dudes are great musicians. They rarely, if ever, descend into the overaggressive antimelodic drivel that dominates much of music these days and is in fact the M.O. for many modern bands; when the song they're playing runs it course, fuck it--it's time to just go balls to the wall! Instead, Grizzly Bear is defined by their restraint. Which is why they are among the very few bands who could pull off the encore they performed. They did one song--acoustically, since Town Hall "is good for this sort of thing," as they intimated. Drummer with a single snare and a tamborine, Droste with an acoustic guitar, and the remaining members without their instruments, simply going a cappella. It was perfect, and it displayed very well what is so great about Grizzly Bear. It was a light onslaught of lush harmony, with vocals weaving in and out of guitar chords and a light percussion pitter-patter providing some time in the background.

The crowd seemed to love it (the whole show). There weren't any clunkers, and few if any meh tracks--it should be noted that Grizzly Bear is not a "songs" band as much as they're an "albums" band; "While You Wait For The Others" is simply awesome, but it's simply awesome x 100 if you happen across it in the course of listening to Veckatimest rather than just double-clicking it for a quick fix of excellence. GB is chock full of variety, variety in the way of OK Computer and Illinois. Granted, it's not everyone's bag, which is fine, because it's that type of thing. I love Kill Bill, but I can understand if someone doesn't. I really can't say the same for Pulp Fiction. Nor can I for With The Beatles. But Grizzly Bear isn't Billboard pop and it isn't for everyone. It is, however, a great band, eminently listenable, and the creator of one of 2009's best albums.