Grizzly Bear

Shields

Beautiful as Grizzly Bear is, they remain an emotionally cloistered lover, willing only to speak in vagaries, never of concrete emotional needs.

Though there are several tracks here that make for a less immediate listen, the record overfl ows with the tell-tale nuances of a band who have learnt how to translate grandiosity into something more restrained, yet no less forceful.

With Shields, they still sound like Radiohead at a Buddhist retreat, but the songs are more muscular.

The complexity and jumpy qualities of the band's 2009 classic 'Veckatimest' have been replaced by smooth, rolling, road trip music.

‘Shields’ is an engrossing, beautiful work which could only come from Grizzly Bear, and only at this point in their career. Stunning.

If their painstaking studiocraft has in the past seemed over-refined or even fussy, here they’ve discovered a new wildness, a liberating sense of drama.

More often, it sounds as if Grizzly Bear have spent their time away digging out the emotions that sometimes get buried beneath the technical fireworks.

Shields is both well-mannered and demanding, subdued but always bubbling under the surface. 

Conservative ... describes Shields: Veckatimest authorized it to be far bolder. You yearn for what could’ve been.

For all the strange twists and turns, the rich layers and dark beauty to be found, nothing here grabs you and sets up home in your heart like ‘Veckatimest’ did. 

The hard work they put into Shields deserves recognition, even if it occasionally strikes as too labored and considered.

There’s more than enough here to interest the brain, the feet, and most things in between.

It feels a little unfair to criticise Grizzly Bear for producing what is essentially the definitive example of a sound they’ve been slowly perfecting over the last eight years, but unfortunately the accomplishment here is met with an unexpected level of predictability.

Shields might not quite leave the mark you may have been expecting once the dust settles, but unlike their previous albums’ predilection with time and place, it’s the journey rather than the destination that matters.

Pretty but formless, Shields plays like a calculated retreat into something altogether indistinct and inconsequential.

Shields is not going to grab you, but it rewards patience.

With Shields, the New York psych folk outfit Grizzly Bear makes a move toward subtlety, toning down some of the bright, poppy moments that made 2009's Veckatimest such a powerhouse.