Veckatimest

In the three years following Grizzly Bear’s full-band debut, Yellow House, Edward Droste and company didn’t exactly take great pains to keep the details of their new record a secret. And we, the indie faithful, paid very close attention. We read Stereogum and Pitchfork, lingered on Droste’s mod est eloquence when he granted interviews to a smattering of publications. We learned that the record was conceived and written at the famous Glen Tonche estate in upstate New York, recorded at Droste’s grandmother’s home off Cape Cod, and completed in a church in New York City. We learned that the songs were written by all four members—Droste (guitar), Daniel Rossen (guitar), Christopher Bear (drums) and Chris Taylor (bass/woodwinds/electronics)—instead of Droste and Rossen only. We learned that Nico Muhly would provide string arrangements on several tracks, and that Beach House’s Victoria Legrand would sing on one ("Two Weeks"). We breathed a sigh of relief when “Cheerleader”, an album track released earlier in the year, didn’t let us down. Some of us even managed to hear an awful quality rip of the record months prior to its release, although this was certainly not the band’s intention. It’s almost as if Veckatimest came, saw, conquered and peaced out before stores even began to sell it.

Veckatimest ain't perfect; lord knows it tries. More than most any album in recent memory not named Chinese Democracy (please keep reading), it is compositionally and sonically airtight, every moment sounding tweaked, labored over. Perfection-- and the pursuit thereof-- has its price, and in less able hands (with all love to Axl), this obsessive attention to craft and execution could lead to something dull. What's perhaps the most remarkable thing about the truly remarkable Veckatimest, however, is how very exciting much of it is; no small feat for a painstaking chamber-pop record that never once veers above the middle tempo.