Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Reading between the lines of praise bestowed upon 2006’s Yellow House, it seemed there were just as many listeners left indifferent to its slow-burning charms as there were those who championed it into various end-of-year lists. Follow up Veckatimest will almost certainly see such a gulf between camps triumphantly reduced. Opening duo Southern Point and Two Weeks are the unmistakable calling cards of a band renewed with the confidence to pull off such a tracklisting where once they would have hidden such gems within the album’s darker crevasses.

Yet Veckatimest’s main bulk will satisfy those who stuck by that last LP, particularly the haunting melodrama of Dory and the experimental lullaby Ready Able, which, over repeated listens, reveal themselves as equal highlights to the quartet’s newly-found pop smarts. While You Wait For The Others meanwhile is a perfect distillation of all this, entering with an unassuming waltz, quietly building up on the band’s four-way pitter-patter vocals, then succumbing to singer Ed Droste’s spine-tingling cry. At a time when Grizzly Bear could have rested on their laurels and still brought in the plaudits, Veckatimest is a bold step forward that should finally turn those sitting on the fence while exceeding the expectations of those already converted.