Grizzly Bear
Painted Ruins

How difficult is it to lose oneself and then find oneself again? But how rewarding it is.

Five years during which there was no more talk of them, with a backdrop of arguments and a desire to focus on other projects, Grizzly Bear reappears with a highly sophisticated work.

So similar to themselves (knowing their strengths well) and every time so different. And those songs, the more you listen to them, the more you discover some nuance you had missed.

This is what I personally always seek in music.

“Losing All Sense” might be one of those that already seems familiar, yet almost at the end, there's that absurd harmonic twist – “…just thinking, just thinking, it’s too late” – that truly makes you feel like you've lost the sense of the situation.

If “Morning Sound” is their way of doing pop, “Aquarian” is one of the high points of the album, where each passage corresponds to a change of groove, harmony, and style within the same piece. “Systole” is the folk version of an Air song.

The voices of Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen alternate and blend perfectly as never before, and the harmonizations of the choirs complete the surreal and elusive scenario, their trademark.

It is the stylistic maturity that distinguishes this fifth album of the band born in Brooklyn, New York, but separated since 2012, with three members relocated to the opposite coast.

From this instability, Grizzly Bear are not unbalanced but rather, they derive an enormous creative potential. They know where to take the songs and know at what pace to follow the sound flow, without losing themselves, drowning in it.

Every track captures a moment, your moment, and it is up to you to decide where to direct your attention.

“Four Cypresses” is a masterpiece for lovers of the genre.

Living in a pile

Tangled in a pile

It’s chaos but it works