Grizzly Bear - Friend EP (Warp)
4/5
As a stopgap between last year's Yellow House and their next album proper, the Friend EP is a fitting distillation of the Grizzly Bear muse and their rather beguiling mix of influences. Featuring ten tracks (eleven with the uncredited secret track), including a number of covers (or are they remixes, it's difficult to tell?) from such Pitchfork approved peers as CSS, Band of Horses and Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, it's a tour de force that firmly asserts the 'extended' in extended play. If nothing else, Warp certainly knows how to provide value for money.
Such things would of course be irrelevant if what we were presented with were off-cuts from an album in need of a further push. However, with such an array of talent on-board it's somewhat unlikely and any fears are immediately allayed as the reworked version of 'Alligator' opens the record. The signature soporific tones that characterised Yellow House gently segue into a climactic cacophony of chiming vocals and dense instrumentation at a still not long enough six minutes. As if to answer that perennially ignored question of what would happen if the boy with the Midas touch got his hands on what was already gold, the boozy boy wonder Zach Condon pipes up at exactly the right moment with his Eastern European bar-room blitz horns. It's a high water mark for sure - and we're only one song in. 'Little Brother (Electric)' adds further bombast, this time replete with a haunting melody something akin to walking through a Tim Burton dream sequence. If Edward Scissorhands had an iPod...
Of the 'covers', the CSS refiguring of 'Knife' works best in that it sounds exactly like a CSS song: street smart, strutting and a little vulnerable. I think that's the sound of 2000 indieboy hearts breaking (mine included). Band of Horses replace their usual searing guitars for a sweet but simple banjo workout on 'Plans' that slightly undersells their ability, but provides a temporarily captivating diversion nonetheless. Grizzly Bear's own cover of The Crystals peerless 'He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)' is an intriguing insight into their lineage, but is easily bettered by their own compositions. From the remaining tracks, the David Rossen acoustic home recording of 'Deep Blue Sea' stands head and shoulders above the rest. Intimate and sincere, it could be an Elliot Smith standard if not for Rossen's distinct vocals.
2007 has seen an unlikely reappraisal of that dreaded four-letter word-prog. For all their punk credentials, albums this year from Battles, Marnie Stern and Dirty Projectors have been underscored by a baffling degree of skilful noodling long tied to that much maligned genre, and Grizzly Bear are tapping that same source here. Indeed, fellow New Yorkers, Dirty Projectors show up on the aforementioned 'Alligator' and their presence is a clear indicator of a shared sensibility, affirmed also by the almost Beatles-esque (read Yes) harmonising on 'Shift'. Without straying off too far into a world of dream catchers, purple wizard trousers and Saxondale midlife crisis, Grizzly Bear do a fine job of evoking the otherworldly and ethereal without being utterly f**king annoying. A triumph if ever there was one.
In an overpopulated world of crass "am a facking mockney" parochialism and too-tight-trousered to say anything smart indiedom, the Friend EP is a refreshing diversion that demonstrates that mining the past need not equate to retro fetishism. Roll on album number two.
Stream two tracks from the 'Friend EP' HERE.
Artists in this article: Grizzly Bear
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment