Mosaic Music Festival - Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear started out of the bedroom of songwriter Ed Droste some 10 years ago, a solo project he never expected would today bare its teeth in the indie arena. And yet here it is in its current line-up, a four-piece outfit exploring the infinite expanse of emotional catharsis through their music, finding audiences along the way.

And while others are in the throes of quickly creating and releasing albums to keep up with the digital world, Shields, their fourth and most fluid album to date, slyly defies that trend. True, the quartet of Droste, Christopher Bear, Daniel Rossen and Chris Taylor have never made a quick follow-up; it took them three years to get from Horn of Plenty to Yellow House, and another three to get to Veckatimest. In between, they not only toured but issued singles and splits, EPs and remixes.

Indeed, Shields depended upon the urgency of a band whose members have opted back in. For the first time after a year-long hiatus, they wrote more songs than they needed and scrupulously edited the ideas; Rossen and Droste wrote songs together, taking each other’s ideas, extending and executing them with a new vitality; and for the first time, they moved forward only with the songs that were most open to true quartet collaboration.

“This has a different energy behind it,” concludes Droste. “Veckatimest was a little more of a polite album; the desire to keep the vocals smooth might have kept a little distance between us and the audience. This one feels a bit more rough and exposed, so that on Shields, everything speaks for itself.”